2 0 0 6
Collaboration Series
Public Deliberation:
A Manager’s Guide
to Citizen Engagement
Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer
President
AmericaSpeaks
Lars Hasselblad Torres
Researcher
AmericaSpeaks
C O L L A B O R AT I O N S E R I E S
Public Deliberation:
A Manager’s Guide
to Citizen Engagement
Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer
President
AmericaSpeaks
Lars Hasselblad Torres
Researcher
AmericaSpeaks
T A B L E
O F
C O N T E N T S
Foreword ..............................................................................................4
Executive Summary ..............................................................................5
Introduction .........................................................................................7
What Is Citizen Engagement? ..............................................................9
Citizen Engagement as a Global Movement ................................10
Citizen Engagement in the Activities of Federal Agencies ............12
Two Barriers to Effective Agency Engagement Practice ................12
Citizen Engagement Today: The State of Practice .........................14
Putting Citizen Engagement into Practice ..........................................16
A Focus on Engagement ..............................................................18
Using Deliberative Democracy as a Tool for Citizen Engagement......20
Characteristics of Face-to-Face Deliberation ................................21
Deliberative Democracy: Face-to-Face...............................................24
Models of Face-to-Face Deliberation ...........................................24
Deliberation in Practice ...............................................................26
Deliberative Democracy: Online .......................................................33
Online Engagement in Federal Agencies ......................................35
Challenges to Online Deliberation ..............................................37
Unique Features of Online Deliberation ......................................38
Online Deliberation: Examples from Practice ..............................38
Conclusions and Recommendations...................................................44
Acknowledgments ..............................................................................47
Endnotes ............................................................................................48
Selected Resources.............................................................................50
Resource Persons (Interviews)............................................................51
Bibliography .......................................................................................53
About the Authors..............................................................................55
Key Contact Information....................................................................57
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
F O R E W O R D
February 2006
On behalf of the IBM Center for The Business of Government, we are pleased to present this report,
“Public Deliberation: A Manager’s Guide to Citizen Engagement” by Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer and Lars
Hasselblad Torres.
Individuals, groups, and non-governmental institutions have a growing need for information that allows
them to make more informed choices in their personal lives as citizens, such as retirement planning options.
There is also a need for them to engage in solving major public challenges, such as dealing with the community impacts of the Base Realignment Commission. In addition, citizens need to have opportunities to
monitor governmental performance, such as the British approach to reporting the performance and progress of their society.
Traditional approaches to citizen engagement have been one-way, for example, citizen testimony at hearings. But in recent years, other approaches have evolved that foster an active, two-way dialogue between
citizens and government. One early approach, in the 1990s, was Oregon Governor Barbara Roberts’ town
hall meetings across the state to craft a statewide plan for the future. This type of dialogue has been extended
to many other forums: citizens in New York deciding the fate of the site of the 9/11 terrorist attack, citizens
in the District of Columbia involved in setting priorities for their community, and citizens in Florida engaged
in the restoration of the Everglades, among many other examples. When implemented effectively, the use of
meaningful dialogue has led to greater community consensus around results, oftentimes speeding actions
because there are fewer efforts to use legal proceedings to stymie initiatives.
There are new and exciting opportunities to engage citizens by informing, consulting, involving, and collaborating with them through a number of techniques; for example, the use of online surveys and peer-to-peer
communication tools such as blogs and wikis. Many of these are now being piloted and used by states,
localities, and nonprofits. There is also an increased interest by federal agencies. But the challenge of reaching those who don’t already participate as activists or interest group members remains.
This report documents a spectrum of tools and techniques developed largely in the nonprofit world in
recent years to increase citizens’ involvement in their communities and government. It also highlights ways
in which public managers can develop an active approach to increasing citizens’ involvement in government at all levels. We trust that this report will be useful and informative to managers across the nation
seeking new, innovative ways to engage citizens.
Albert Morales
Managing Partner
IBM Center for The Business of Government
[email protected]
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IBM Center for The Business of Government
Jonathan D. Breul
Senior Fellow
IBM Center for The Business of Government
[email protected]
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
E X E C U T I V E
S U M M A R Y
In the United States, municipalities, states, and regions
are coming to recognize that democratic governance
can be revitalized through new opportunities and
spaces for citizen participation. Governments are
responding to rising pressure for democratic reform
through a range of innovations that create new channels of engagement with the public and share decision
making with citizens. In Washington, D.C., the Mayor’s
Office of Neighborhood Action has instituted a biannual
strategic planning process that ties citizen input to
budget decisions. Six municipal governments in
Connecticut use handheld devices to engage youth
in the monitoring and evaluation of city services.
Widespread cities like Los Angeles are experimenting
with Neighborhood Councils to reduce political
apathy, give citizens a larger say in the development
of the city budget, and foster a culture of participatory
and responsive local government. In major cities like
Baltimore and Chicago, community involvement in
neighborhood policing has helped to reduce crime
while lowering costs.
These and many other innovations in participatory
decision making together point the way toward
innovative governance mechanisms that nurture
the democratic impulse and achieve results.
The purpose of this guide to citizen engagement is
to strengthen the foundation for participatory governance within the federal government, in particular
in agency decision making. The guide provides
examples of experimentation with new techniques
to engage citizens at all levels of governance,
thereby encouraging federal managers to see themselves as potential agents within this movement to
reinvigorate democratic governance.
In this guide we hope to make the case for two
key shifts in public administration. First is a shift
from information exchange models to information
processing models of citizen engagement. Second
is a shift from citizens as consumers to active shapers
of government policies and programs (Cornwall and
Gaventa, 2001). We believe that these two basic
adjustments toward viewing citizen engagement as
fundamentally knowledge building and necessarily
influential within the administrative process can have
profoundly positive benefits to the substance, transparency, legitimacy, and fairness of policy development as well as the general view of government held
by citizens. We hope this guide will shed some light
on exactly how this can be achieved.
This guide is composed of four main sections: In the
first we’ll conduct a quick inventory of existing policy
frameworks for citizen participation and summarize
the shortcomings of current practice as it is shaped
by these policy guidelines. The guide will then introduce an emerging field of practice known as “deliberative democracy” and provide some examples of
where citizens engage face-to-face in addressing
community issues. We’ll then move into the online
world, which has demonstrated a remarkable capacity to spark innovation and experimentation and has
yielded several interesting techniques of which
agency managers should be aware. Fourth, we’ll
provide a very concise summary of key features and
techniques for deliberation within a framework for
understanding how they can complement policy
and program development. In the same section we’ll
provide an inventory of some of the most promising
techniques as a starting point for agency managers
to “pick and choose” among methods. Finally, we’ll
conclude the guide with a set of recommendations
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
that we expect can encourage public deliberation in
the activities of federal agencies and support the
development of an “infrastructure of engagement”
throughout government.
To develop the observations and recommendations
discussed in this report, we have relied on a substantial literature review (including an in-depth review
of existing public involvement guides), interviews
with over two dozen managers in public agencies,
and our own experience over the last 10 years
working with government authorities at all levels to
bring citizens into policy-making processes. We have
sought to make our recommendations as relevant and
as practical as possible by relying upon practicebased evidence of what works, and the knowledge of
agency executives who have been engaging citizens
in policy development for years.
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IBM Center for The Business of Government
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Introduction
In this guide we hope to make the case for two key
shifts in public administration. First is a shift from
information exchange models to information processing models of citizen engagement. Second is a
shift from citizens as consumers to active shapers
of government policies and programs (Cornwall and
Gaventa, 2001). We believe that these two basic
adjustments toward viewing citizen engagement as
fundamentally knowledge building and necessarily
influential within the administrative process can have
profoundly positive benefits to the substance, transparency, legitimacy, and fairness of policy development
as well as the general view of government held by
citizens. We hope this guide will shed some light on
exactly how this can be achieved.
We distinguish “citizen engagement” here from the
more general term “citizen participation,” what one
senior federal manager interviewed for this report
called a “spectrum” composed of four goals: to inform,
consult, engage, and collaborate with citizens. What
we want to emphasize here is an active, intentional
partnership between the general public and decision makers. This core value fits well toward the
“engage-collaborate-empower” end of five goals set
forth in the public involvement spectrum developed
by the International Association for Public Participation
(IAP2), a leading national association of participation
practitioners (see Table 1).
Our conclusion is that to simply inform and to
consult are “thin,” frequently pro forma techniques
of participation that often fail to meet the public’s
expectations for involvement and typically yield
little in the way of new knowledge. While both
may be essential elements to bookend good public
participation, left on their own they are insufficient
techniques to clarify citizen values and priorities and
give citizens a share in decision making. Certainly
these information exchange models are unable to
maximize a key feature of good policy design—the
uncovering and weighing of a range of policy alternatives—as they are frequently dominated by the
usual voices. Further, basic communication and consultation mechanisms are unlikely to achieve shared
policy preferences across groups, what one recent
report termed “rational balance points” (RAND, 2005).
Finally, these approaches do little to raise trust
Table 1: Public Involvement Spectrum
Goal:
Inform
Consult
Engage
Collaborate
Empower
Provide the public
with balanced
and objective
information to
assist them in
understanding
the problem,
alternatives,
opportunities,
and/or solutions
Obtain public
feedback on
analysis, alternatives, and/or
decisions
Work directly
with the public
throughout the
process to ensure
that public
concerns and
aspirations are
consistently
understood and
considered
Partner with
the public in
each aspect of
the decision
including the
development of
alternatives and
the identification
of the preferred
solution
Place final
decision-making
authority in the
hands of citizens
Source: Adapted from the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2).
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
between citizens and government, and in some cases
can do more harm than good when the process fails
to meet public expectations (Booher et al., 2004).
Similarly, collaboration is an essential but often too
narrow, time-consuming, and expert-driven mode
of participation to achieve the level of inclusiveness
and awareness necessary for reform of some of our
most urgent issues, for example, healthcare, climate
change, and energy policy.
By contrast, we view citizen engagement as a commitment from government to cultivate deeper levels
of knowledge among citizens generally about the
issue at hand and potential solutions, and to provide
opportunities for citizens to exercise that knowledge
in service of policy and program development in
a regular and ongoing basis. Citizen engagement
emphasizes the quality and depth of learning and
involvement over the breadth and frequency of
exchange (though each is ultimately important to
the overall process). What we hope to provoke is
the beginning of a discussion about the “infrastructure of engagement,” the policy framework and institutional mechanisms necessary to support citizen
engagement in policy and program development.
Therefore, our modest effort is to shift the needle of
democratic reform discourse from “participation”
and “involvement” in government decision making
to “engagement” and “empowerment”—a shift from
information exchange models of involving citizens
to information processing models that help citizens
make meaning of policy alternatives and share with
them a real stake in the decision-making process.
Our guide to engagement techniques will emphasize two promising and emergent fields of activity:
deliberative approaches for face-to-face citizen
participation and evolving spaces for online engagement. What distinguishes our task from other major
governance reform projects is simple: We are looking at new ways to engage ordinary citizens who,
while they do not have deep policy expertise on all
matters, do have experience and knowledge from
the neighborhood and community level that is vital
to the policy-making process. More importantly,
these citizens have a claim to the process because
the quality of their lives is shaped by administrative
decisions and policy outcomes.
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IBM Center for The Business of Government
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
What Is Citizen Engagement?
Citizen engagement is part of a family of democratic
reform ideas that includes public participation, public
involvement, participatory democracy, deliberative
democracy, and collaborative governance. When
used in relation to the online environment, a new
vocabulary is evoked, which includes e-democracy,
digital democracy, e-government, and electronic
governance. What is important to know about these
terms is that, while they all make distinctions around
the purpose, breadth, and techniques of participation,
at base they recognize and build upon a fundamental right of all citizens to have a say in the decisions
that affect their lives. Citizen participation policies and
programs reflect a basic adoption of this principle and
extend a “standing invitation” to citizens to engage
in policy development and decision-making activities.
In general, citizen participation activities revolve
around six aims:
1. Inform and educate the public about important
policy issues.
2. Improve government decisions by supplying
better information upward from citizens to
decision makers.
3. Create opportunities for citizens to shape and,
in some cases, determine public policy.
4. Legitimate government decisions by ensuring that
the voices of those impacted by government policy
have been heard, considered, and addressed.
5. Involve citizens in monitoring the outcomes of
policy for evaluation.
6. Improve the quality of public life by restoring
the trust and engagement of citizens.
While citizen participation can and does take many
forms—including public hearings, citizen advisory
councils, public comment periods, and community
boards—in this report we will focus on particular
forms of citizen engagement that emphasize information processing over information exchange, and
empowerment over communication (see Table 2 on
page 10).
When we speak of citizen engagement, we will be
referring to forums that bring the general, impacted
public into partnership with decision makers through
dialogue-based processes at points along the policydevelopment continuum, which is to say agenda setting, policy design, and implementation. In general,
these kinds of forums are considered “deliberative
spaces,” characterized by face-to-face and online forms
of discussion. In some cases, there will even be a role
for the public in “social monitoring”: engaging citizens in measuring the impacts of policy for evaluation.
In our work at AmericaSpeaks (see box on page 11),
we have adopted a set of seven principles for any
deliberative engagement process that we run:
1. Educate participants. Provide accessible information to citizens about the issues and choices
involved, so that they can articulate informed
opinions.
2. Frame issues neutrally. Offer an unbiased framing
of the policy issue in a way that allows the public
to struggle with the most difficult choices facing
decision makers.
3. Achieve diversity. Involve a demographically
balanced group of citizens reflective of the
impacted community.
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Table 2: Characteristics of Information Exchange vs. Information Processing Models
of Public Communication
Information Exchange Models
(i.e., public hearings)
Information Processing Models
(i.e., deliberative forums)
Speaker-focused
Participant-focused
Experts deliver information
Experts respond to participant questions
Citizens air individual ideas and concerns
Citizens identify shared ideas and concerns
and assign them relative priority
Participants share anecdotal evidence
Participants use detailed, balanced
background materials
Often engages the “usual suspects”: stakeholders
and citizens already active on specific issues
Reaches into diverse populations, including
citizens not usually active, with efforts to reach
under-represented
No group discussion of questions
Facilitator-led small group discussion
Source: AmericaSpeaks, 2003.
4. Get buy-in from policy makers. Achieve commitment from decision makers to engage in the
process and use the results in policy making.
5. Support quality deliberation. Facilitate highquality discussion that ensures all voices are heard.
6. Demonstrate public consensus. Produce information that clearly highlights the public’s shared
priorities.
7. Sustain involvement. Support ongoing involvement by the public on the issue, including
feedback, monitoring, and evaluation
(AmericaSpeaks, 2004).
In the most “empowered” cases, deliberative
approaches to citizen participation engage the
public in making collectively binding decisions.1
Although rare, recent experiences of empowered
citizen deliberation in Canada (notably the British
Columbia Citizens Assembly) have sparked a firestorm of experimentation, across Canada and in
Europe. In Brazil, for over a decade residents of
the southern city of Porto Alegre have determined
a portion of the city’s annual budget through a
“participatory budget” cycle.
What we are seeking to describe here is a middle
ground between participation as “consultation”—
feedback mechanisms between government and
citizens—and these latter examples of delegated
authority. We are describing a space in which
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IBM Center for The Business of Government
citizens and public officials meet in an open process to clarify values, determine priorities, and then
shape public policy.
Citizen Engagement
as a Global Movement
Advances in citizen engagement practice are
taking place around the world, and are not limited
to local, state, or national governments: they are
being carried out through international bodies
like the United Nations and led by multinational
institutions like the World Bank. “Engaging citizens
in policy making,” the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development has recently
reported, “is a sound investment and a core
element of good governance. It allows governments
to tap wider sources of information, perspectives,
and potential solutions, and improves the quality
of the decisions reached. Equally important, it
contributes to building public trust in government,
raising the quality of democracy and strengthening
civic capacity” (OECD, 2001, p. 11). As one senior
Canadian official from their Office of Citizens and
Civics put it, “[Citizen participation] is a worldwide
movement, and it is a community-driven demand”
(Broderick interview, 2005).
The most dynamic states are responding to this
demand by opening new spaces and mechanisms
for participation within government, at all levels.
So far, three general kinds of efforts are taking place.
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
What Is AmericaSpeaks?
AmericaSpeaks is a nonprofit organization committed to reinvigorating American democratic practice at
the national level by developing new institutions that link citizens across the country to policy making in
Washington. To meet this commitment, it has developed new approaches for engaging the public that take
democracy to a larger scale, so thousands, even millions, can take part in nationwide deliberations.
Since 1995, AmericaSpeaks has sought to transform democracy as we know it by engaging citizens in the
most important public decisions that impact their lives. More than 65,000 Americans have participated in
AmericaSpeaks’ forums, called 21st Century Town Meetings, linking the public to decision makers. Each forum
integrates intimate, face-to-face discussion with state-of-the-art technology to provide a new kind of venue for the
public to be heard.
AmericaSpeaks’ most ambitious initiative at the national level to date was a two-year national dialogue on Social
Security reform, funded by The Pew Charitable Trusts, called Americans Discuss Social Security (ADSS). Between
1997 and 1999, Dr. Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer—founder and president of AmericaSpeaks—directed this twoyear nationwide dialogue about the future of Social Security. The goal of ADSS was to take the best of the New
England town hall meeting—citizens talking with citizens to solve problems—and utilize technology to efficiently
and effectively involve hundreds, even thousands, of citizens at the same time. Through these efforts, combined
with television coverage of ADSS interactive video teleconferences and large city forums, literally millions of
Americans had the opportunity to be touched by ADSS in a 15-month period.
For more information, visit www.americaspeaks.org.
1. Governments are making more information
available publicly through new channels:
“empowering” individual citizens and groups
to make more informed choices and in general
advance the goal of a transparent state.
2. Governments are creating new spaces and institutional arrangements for participation, online,
and face-to-face. These governments are creating
opportunities for participation in policy development and undertaking crucial institutional reforms
that ensure the results of public participation are
fed into decision-making processes.
3. Decision makers are being held to higher levels
of accountability through the use of democratic
audits, scorecards, and other third-party participatory performance measurement tools (also
known as “social monitoring”). These techniques
range from simple service delivery “scorecards”
to wireless and handheld participatory monitoring systems.
In countries like the United Kingdom, Australia, and
Canada—and even at the transnational level in the
case of the European Union—new policy frameworks
and guidelines are emerging that place information,
consultation, and participation at the center of
emerging administrative practice. A recent study in
Canada—part of a seven-year research process that
at one point engaged 20 government departments—
demonstrated that citizens desire greater access to
government and increased involvement in decision
making (EKOS, 2002). One survey carried out in
2002 found that while Canada and the United States
share equally low levels of public trust in Ottawa
and Washington “to do what is right” always or
most of the time (about 25 percent), 84 percent of
respondents indicated that they “would feel better
about government decision making if [they] knew
that government regularly sought informed input
from average citizens” (EKOS, 2002, p. 8).
As a result of the combination of research and proactive leadership in Ottawa, the Canadian government
has, over the last decade, built up a policy “scaffolding” that now “requires departments to have a policy
consultation process as part of any major public
policy initiative, and to document any kind of consultation process they were planning. Consultation was
formally integrated in writing into [the] policy development process” (Cook interview, 2005).
The kind of documentation of citizen views about
participation and government-wide planning for participation evident in Canada and other democracies
is missing from the public administration discourse
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
in the United States. Instead, we must rely on data
that describes increased interest-group formation,
dwindling political participation, declining levels of
social capital, and scattered evidence from experiences at the local, state, and federal levels on which
to build our case for reform. A comprehensive view
of the drivers of participatory policy making and
administrative reform in the United States has not yet
been developed. However, from our work bringing
citizens and decision makers together in large-scale
public deliberations across the country, AmericaSpeaks
has found that citizens’ appetite for partnership in
decision making is no less strong in the United
States than elsewhere: Our town meeting forums of
1,500 to 3,000 citizens are regularly filled to capacity. In follow-up surveys to our large-scale meetings,
participants indicate in clear majorities that they feel
these kinds of forums “are good for democracy.”
Americans, like a growing number of citizens around
the world, desire real influence in the decisions that
impact their lives. As one public policy textbook puts
it, an “attitudinal characteristic that influences public
policy in the United States is the citizen’s desire to
participate in government” (Peters, 1999, p. 15). “The
public wants to be involved,” a senior official from
the Bureau of Land Management concurred. “We see
that in the proliferation of watershed conservation
groups, of which there are 3,000 today, compared to
500 a decade ago, and in the proliferation of volunteers who volunteer to work on land—nearly 240,000
volunteers per year” (Emmerson interview, 2005).
Citizen Engagement in the Activities
of Federal Agencies
The modern era of citizen participation in federal
policy decision making was entered with the passage of the Equal Opportunity Act of 1964. It was
this act, specifically its Title II provision mandating
the “maximum feasible participation” of residents in
the development of neighborhood revitalization programs, that modernized policy making by creating
room for impacted persons in the decision-making
process. Since then, issues of transparency, accountability, and citizen influence have grown in significance, for at least four reasons. First, the media and
new information and communication technologies
have brightened the light on government action.
Second, the steep rise of interest group politics has
raised the specter of “the end of government”: The
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failure of pluralist bargaining to solve persistent public policy dilemmas has broadened both the appetite
and space for alternative policy-making processes.
Third, new management practices stress the importance of improving policies and practices by learning from the outcomes of operational programs on
an ongoing basis, implying a closer relationship with
the public (Modernizing NEPA, 2003, p. 8). Fourth,
in the face of downward trends in civic engagement,
government is being asked to play a more active role
to involve citizens in decision making.
As a result, citizen participation is being recast
as an instrument to improve both the quality and
legitimacy of government action. We interpret these
trends as an emerging new role for government:
the role of convener of the public. To sustain this
role effectively, agencies will need to adapt existing policy and administrative processes and new
mechanisms developed at the national level to share
knowledge, promote practice, and evaluate results.
Two Barriers to Effective Agency
Engagement Practice
American government needs a strengthened and
comprehensive framework for thinking about public
participation, and citizen engagement specifically,
in the activities of federal agencies. From what we
have learned, federal guidelines for participation
are fragmented and, in many cases, either outdated
(not reflective of the best thinking around participatory processes and techniques) or insufficient
(lacking enough procedural clarity to actually
shape agency practice).
At the same time, the knowledge of how to “do”
citizen engagement better is too thinly distributed
among departments across agencies: There is no
central coordinating mechanism for the collection
and dissemination of best practices and emerging
techniques for deepening citizen engagement in
the activities of federal agencies.
These principal barriers are confounded by institutional obstacles such as administrators’ common
misperception that the public cannot contribute
meaningfully to policy and program development, and a lack of incentive structures to improve
engagement from within agencies (Yang, 2005).
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Fragmentation of Policy about Citizen
Engagement
One senior agency official with more than 30 years
of experience managing participation programs for
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers observed during an
interview that “a lot of the reason behind ignoring
or downplaying public involvement has to do with
fragmentation of federal policies. There are no coordination mechanisms” (Delli Priscoli interview, 2005).
The legal frameworks for participation in the United
States constitute both an enabling environment, which
is to say that they require certain forms of citizen
participation, and a barrier to participation, in that
they prohibit or unnecessarily limit the range of participatory techniques available to federal managers.
Several key pieces of legislation provide insufficient
guidance and incentives to deepen citizen participation practices or present obstacles to reform for their
narrow focus. These include the Administrative
Procedures Act of 1946 (APA), the Federal Advisory
Committee Act of 1972, the Government Performance
and Results Act of 1993 (GPRA), the Paperwork
Reduction Act of 1995 (PRA), and the Government
Paperwork Elimination Act of 1998 (GPEA).
The Administrative Procedures Act (APA) was created out of congressional concern for the lack of
uniform policies guiding regulatory rule making. The
basic framework for the commonly used procedure
in rule making as laid out in the APA prescribes a
process of informal rule making, which includes the
opportunity for the public to comment on the proposed rule. “While the APA does not require all
agencies to follow one single model for rule making,” the oversight group OMB Watch reports, “it
does impose minimum procedural conditions that
all agencies are expected to follow...to ensure that
the public has the opportunity to participate in the
formulation and revision of government regulations.”2 Under President Clinton, the rule-making
process was updated in 1990 with the passage of
the Negotiated Rulemaking Act, which specified
ground rules enabling agencies to bargain with
stakeholders in the development of regulatory rules
(Williams and Fung, p. 20).3
The Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA) was
passed during a watershed period for public participation in the United States, a time when groups
seeking to influence government were proliferating.
In an effort to make the process of advising execu-
tive branch agencies more uniform, objective, and
open to the public, FACA defined somewhat costly
and time-consuming administrative processes for the
establishment, procedures, and termination of federal
advisory committees. The procedural limits and
requirement for judicial review seriously limit an
agency’s opportunity to contact the public. In doing
so, FACA may exercise a “chilling effect” on public
participation, fostering an environment more conducive to elite input than the involvement of ordinary
citizens (Long and Beierle, 1999, p. 9).4 For example,
under existing guidelines, it would be difficult for an
agency to sanction a large-scale policy-level public
meeting over the course of two or three days to
develop consensus among participants around shared
values and priorities in response to a flu pandemic.
The Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA) was amended
during the Clinton administration at a time when
improving the efficiency and effectiveness of government was a high priority. The overarching purpose
of this act is to reduce the paperwork “burden” of
information collection and dissemination through
alternative means of communication. At the same
time, PRA includes important public participation
provisions, such as the requirement to seek public
comment on proposed information collection processes through 60-day notice and comment periods.
At the same time, PRA may proscribe the use of
potential innovations in agency information collection, such as Deliberative Polls, if they are found to
create too many “burden hours” on the public.
The Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA)
includes among its aims the goals of increasing public confidence in activities of the federal government, increasing government accountability to the
public, augmenting the resources agency personnel
have to work with, and improving the quality of
objective information that decision makers have to
work with. Since its enactment in 1993, GPRA has
stimulated the growth of new forms of performance
management across agencies, most notably citizendriven performance measurement.
When the Government Paperwork Elimination Act
(GPEA) was passed in 1998, it gave federal agencies
five years to put their paper-based transactions
online. The law was driven by a recognition that
emerging information communication technologies
(ICTs) were reconfiguring government’s relations
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13
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
with citizens and that dramatic changes were necessary for agencies to keep pace with larger societal
trends or, as the bill states, “to preclude agencies or
courts from systematically treating electronic documents and signatures less favorably than their paper
counterparts.”5 The primary emphasis of the bill
centers on business-related transactions and security
concerns, giving little guidance for federal agencies
on improving public consultation and participation
online, in particular where such activity can improve
failing practices like the public hearing.
In addition to a broad, government-wide legislative
framework, most federal agencies have developed
more specific internal implementation guidelines.
For example, in 2003 the National Park Service
issued a “Director’s Order” (DO-75A) entitled “Civic
Engagement and Public Involvement,” which moves
the agency much further toward cultivating partnerships between citizens and government. Among other
purposes, the DO seeks to “renew” its commitment
to citizens by embracing “civic engagement as the
essential foundation and framework for creating plans
and developing programs” (NPS, 2003). At the same
time, the directive cites more than 40 federal laws
and internal directives to which it must comply when
carrying out its citizen engagement activities, though
none were crafted with consideration of the range of
techniques available today.
Poor Coordination and Knowledge Sharing
about Civic Engagement
A second barrier to effective citizen participation in
the activities of federal agencies is the absence of
inter-agency collaboration, knowledge building, and
knowledge sharing across agencies around citizen
engagement. Despite the fact that some agencies
carry out activities like the Environmental Protection
Agency’s (EPA’s) annual “Community Involvement
Conference,” there remains, as one agency official
observed, “huge gaps in knowledge and there is a
need to get information out on how to involve the
public” (Emmerson interview, 2005).
To date, no such coordinating mechanism exists
across government in the United States. While
numerous private and nonprofit consulting firms
such as the International Association for Public
Participation (IAP2), Creighton and Creighton, and
even AmericaSpeaks have for years offered highquality training and engagement consultation in the
14
IBM Center for The Business of Government
field of public participation to agency staff, a tremendous amount of experience and knowledge now
within agencies remains untapped, unstructured, and
unavailable. Too often the expertise and knowledge
remains in the hands of external consultants.
Citizen Engagement Today:
The State of Practice
The most common techniques for citizen engagement, most of which have been mandated by law
at many levels of government, are public hearings,
citizen advisory councils, and public comment periods. While these are important and necessary tools
for information exchange at points along the policy
development continuum, they are unsatisfactory
approaches to promote information processing and
citizen empowerment, the hallmarks of good
engagement practice. “One of the powerful things
about citizen engagement,” one senior executive
told us, “is that it takes government out of the middle
role—as a broker for all information in techniques
where people don’t get to hear each other’s point of
view” (Broderick interview, 2005). As a result, agencies can become conveners and managers of knowledge, facilitating greater levels of understanding,
collaboration, and empowerment within the public.
Many within and outside of government also point
out that common approaches to public participation in decision processes reflect a mechanistic,
“top-down” orientation that does not maximize the
benefits of inter-agency collaboration and meaningful
public participation. One manager at EPA remarked
that her agency’s reform efforts were based on the
recognition that “we needed to do a top-to-bottom
realignment of the agency to reposition community
work away from issuing edicts and saying, ‘We’re
the government, we’re here to help you’ ” (Nurse
interview, 2005). As a result, the agency has adopted
a new public involvement policy, to which the public contributed substantially, that advances the ideas
of engagement and collaboration with the public.
Some critics also argue that traditional approaches
to participation simply do not work and are, in fact,
counterproductive: They breed citizen anger and
mistrust toward government (Innes and Booher,
2004, p. 425). Problem solving at the federal level
is increasingly perceived as a complex process
requiring cooperation among a range of interdepen-
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
dent actors. In addition to ensuring that federal
managers have the best available information to
work with as they make their decisions, which
existing mandated techniques accomplish only to
a limited extent, “engagement” seeks to improve
the capacities of citizens as well. Among these is
the capacity of citizens to make informed choices
in their own lives, solve problems independent of
government, and, when necessary, to work in closer
partnership with agencies at the local level.
ager can do is go forward in a process, raising public
expectations, and then have to scale back and not
deliver. If you are sending out a message to the public
that you want to collaborate with them, but all you
can do legally is inform them, then the public is going
to get the idea that they have more authority than they
really do and they may resent having been involved
in the whole process” (Emmerson interview, 2005).
The most successful citizen participation efforts
today are those that understand engagement as a
series of interrelated, developmental choices that
have more to do with “what level of involvement”
along the policy development-implementation
continuum than any single technique for “one-off”
events that fulfill statutory requirements. As one
Bureau of Land Management official observed,
administrators need to “think about the role they
want the public to play: Do you want to inform
them, consult with them, collaborate with them, or
empower them to make a decision? There is nothing
wrong with making the decision that you are just
going to inform the public. Encourage managers to
think long and hard about whether that is the appropriate choice” (Emmerson interview, 2005).
Many agency personnel have their own hurdles to
overcome as well: latent mistrust of citizens and a need
to demonstrate efficiency and cost savings, among
them. Historically, public administrators’ attitudes
about citizen participation have been identified as a
barrier to citizen participation (Yang, 2005, p. 274).
The little research available suggests that citizens
can learn to navigate the complexities of integrating
expertise and experience and come to sound public
judgment. At the same time, we are seeing evidence
that, when applied correctly to the right situation,
deliberative citizen engagement can save time and
money when it comes time for implementation.
One of the important lessons of the last 40 years of
public administration is that the quality of public input
is often shaped by the processes through which it is
collected. The corollary is that even the best processes fail if they are not attached to clear guidelines
for implementation. “The main roadblock,” a senior
manager at the Department of the Interior observed,
“is failure to think through first what role you want
the public to play on an issue. The worst thing a man-
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15
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Putting Citizen Engagement
into Practice
The broad overview of citizen engagement in the
previous section establishes the why and the what of
incorporating citizen engagement into government
practice. This section lays out a framework for how
it can be done. This framework has been developed
in consultation with federal managers, and is also
based on a review of several existing frameworks,
toolkits, and guides to citizen participation that
have been created within and outside government,
in the U.S. and around the world. The framework
prescribed here draws heavily from the OECD guide
prepared in 2003.
The framework is composed of four interconnected
levels of citizen participation activities: communication, consultation, engagement, and collaboration—
which, taken together, capture the full range of
opportunities. Later, “engagement” will serve as the
central focus for our recommendations to advance
practice within federal agencies.
•
•
16
Communication. This level of involvement
informs the public of pending policy matters
through the use of one- and two-way techniques.
Techniques such as public hearings and public notification strategies via the Internet and
mainstream media can and should be used
at the appropriate stages of policy design and
program development to communicate from
agency staff outward to the public. While such
techniques typically lack mechanisms for information processing and citizen empowerment,
they are basic tools for conducting outreach and
laying the groundwork for informed, successful
engagement and collaboration that come later.
Consultation. This level of involvement seeks
input from groups to inform policy development and facilitate reporting back to the
IBM Center for The Business of Government
public. “The main purpose [of consultation],”
described by the UK Code of Written Practice
on Consultation, “is to improve decision making, by ensuring that they take account of the
views and experiences of those affected by
them.”6 Consultation begins to move toward a
conception of “citizens as partners” in the policy
development process and typically occurs in
stages throughout policy development, allowing
for “call and response”: the opportunity for the
public to provide input, and agency staff to
summarize, respond to, and describe how the
new policy or program reflects public input.
•
Engagement. This level of involvement creates
space for the general-interest public to meaningfully influence the policy and program development activities of government. Through the tools
of deliberation, engagement strategies seek to
build public understanding of the values driving
decision making, the basic facts informing policy
analysis and program design, the interests at
play, and the trade-offs implicit with any decision. Public engagement strategies provide decision makers with opportunities to improve the
substance of public input, cultivate trust through
the process, raise the legitimacy of decisions in
the public eye, and lay the groundwork for lasting implementation. Engagement recognizes that
the public has a right to influence policy and
program development, and creates opportunities
for exchange between experts and the public in
ways that yield balanced recommendations that
influence policy.
•
Collaboration. At this level of involvement, agency
staff open policy and program development to
stakeholders and the public. Collaboration explicitly recognizes that successful policy will result
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
when impacted groups, experts, policy makers,
and the public share power in policy development and implementation. Collaboration reflects
an ongoing relationship between agency staff
and groups, working to mitigate the differences
between policy and program preferences
expressed by the public and those delivered by
government, and to build capacity for ongoing
implementation activity and cooperation among
stakeholders.
Each component of an effective public involvement
strategy implies several sets of goals, strategies, and
tools, which are summarized in Table 3.
Within the “consultation” and “engagement” levels of
participation, there is an important distinction between
activities that focus on information processing (knowledge sharing and meaning-making) as opposed to
information exchange (one-way communication techniques that, at best, yield individual feedback in the
form of comments and written submission).
Table 3: Four Levels of Public Involvement
Level
Information
Consultation
Description
Information
exchange
that ensures
preconditions for
participation
Goals
Strategies
Tools
• Raise public
awareness
• Written
communication
• Opinion poll/
survey
• Collect public
opinion
• Electronic
communication
• Public comment
periods
• Generate policy
momentum
• Verbal
communication
• Public hearing
• Visual
communication
• Poster and media
campaign
• Meet with the
public face-toface
• Public meeting
• Meet with the
public online
• E-consultation
• Involve citizens
in problem
solving
• Meet with the
public face-toface
• Public
deliberation
• Involve citizens
in decision
making
• Meet with the
public online
• Online
deliberation
Information• Educate the
processing tools and
public
clear agency input
• Stimulate public
process
debate
• Clarify values
• Broaden
information base
• Improve decisions
Engagement
Informationprocessing tools
and in some cases
shared decision
making
• Build capacity for
implementation
• Delegate
authority
• Improve
outcomes
Collaboration
Processes to build
capacity for lasting
cooperation among
groups and policy
implementation
• Represent
stakeholders
• Involve experts
• Reduce conflict
among interests
• Improve policy
• Establish a
federal advisory
committee
• Multi-stakeholder
negotiation
• Design
developmental
processes
• Policy consensus
process
• Build capacity for • Share decision
implementation
making
Source: Adapted from OECD, 2003.
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
A Focus on Engagement
There are degrees to which a manager may be able
to apply any of these four “levels” of involvement
(communication, consultation, engagement, and
collaboration). Choices will be determined by conditions such as policy and issue context, incentive
structures, a manager’s level of experience, resource
constraints, political will, and internal agency policy.
While each level of participation can play a key role
in the policy development process, it is the actual
“engagement” of citizens that offers one of the greatest
opportunities for improved policy outcomes. As a
result, the focus here will be to illustrate a framework through which the general public can influence
policy and program development via deliberative
forms of citizen engagement, face-to-face and online.
A key consideration for adopting citizen participation is identifying where the issue lies in the policy
design process: Is it an issue competing for space on
the public agenda? Alternatively, the issue may be at
a point where existing policy must be updated or a
new policy designed. Finally, it might be the case that
the issue has already been addressed through policy,
and new programs are being developed to implement
solutions that require monitoring and evaluation.
This framework describes five stages of the policy
cycle: agenda setting, analysis, design, implementation, and evaluation. At the same time, we have
tried to think through some of the key concerns
of agency managers as they consider the various
opportunities for engaging the public. These considerations include:
18
•
Objectives of each stage of the policy development process
•
The rationales for engaging the public at each
stage in policy development
•
Key challenges to engaging the public at that stage
•
The key strengths needed from a public engagement strategy at each stage of the policy development process
•
A summary of the kinds of techniques that may
be best suited to deliver desirable outcomes at
each stage of policy development
IBM Center for The Business of Government
Tools and techniques for successful public engagement can and should be used throughout the policy
life cycle. For example, while a deliberative forum
can be used for agenda setting (to determine what
issues are most important to the public and require
government leadership), it can also be used for policy
evaluation (to determine to what extent the policy
yielded the intended outcomes or benefits). In essence,
constructive engagement with the public is not a
“one-off” event; rather, good public engagement
practice describes a cycle of policy development
that involves the impacted public from the beginning, right through implementation and evaluation.
At each stage in the policy development process,
different considerations will apply to the choices
and selection of appropriate tools and techniques.
These considerations can include available resources,
policy guidelines, timing, visibility, and the appropriate
level of authority that will be delegated to the public.
Careful internal analysis of these considerations,
along with conversations with public engagement
practitioners, will ultimately suggest which public
engagement tools will be the most effective.
Table 4 on page 19 lays out the five stages in the
policy development cycle, cross-referenced with the
relevant analytic questions and sample responses.
The framework also incorporates specific engagement techniques that are further described in Table 5
(see pages 31–32) and Table 7 (see pages 41–42).
We encourage managers to become familiar with
the various engagement techniques and to consider
developing partnerships with these deliberative
practitioners to improve the substance of policy,
strengthen prospects for successful implementation,
cultivate deliberative capacities within agencies and
the public, and deepen trust between citizens and
the government.
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Table 4: Framework for Selection of Engagement Techniques
Agenda Setting
What is the agency
trying to accomplish
at this stage?
• Establish the
need for a policy
or reform
• Define the
problem to be
addressed
Analysis
• Define the key
challenges and
opportunities
associated with
an issue
• Align qualitative
and quantitative
evidence with
appropriate policy
alternatives
Design
• Evaluate
alternative
policy proposals
• Develop
workable policy
document
Implementation
Evaluation
• Establish
programs,
guidelines,
and effective
processes to
deliver public
benefits
• Monitor policy
outcomes to
determine
whether the
goals of the
policy are being
met during
implementation
• Produce a draft
policy document
What are the
rationales for
doing public
involvement?
• Establish values
What are the key
challenges?
• Risk of raising
expectations
that input will
become policy
• Involve the
public in
identifying
and stating
in their terms
the problems
a policy will
address
• Engage the nonexpert public in
understanding
how policy
prescriptions
will address
values, priorities,
and outcomes
• Ensure broad
public awareness
and support of
policy
• Ensure policy
outcomes meet
public goals
• Incorporate
expert and
experiencebased
knowledge
cooperatively
• Ensure that
ordinary people
who will be
impacted by
policy are
involved
• Communicate
process and
outcomes
broadly
• Develop
appropriate
accountability
mechanisms
• Develop
background
materials that
ensure balance
and neutrality
• Ensure clarity
around how
input will
influence policy
and program
design
• Ensure
community
capacity has
been developed
over the policy
development
process
• Create
informationcollection
mechanisms
• Deliberative Poll
• Citizens Jury
• Public hearing
• ChoiceWork
Dialogue
• Consensus
Conference
• 21st Century
Town Meeting
• Social
monitoring
• Identify priorities
• Generate
outcome
statements
• Ensuring that
key views are
represented
Which engagement
techniques might
work best?
• 21st Century
Town Meeting
• Consensus
Conference
• Mainstream
media
• Connect information collection
to policy feedback cycle
• Scorecards
• ChoiceWork
Dialogue
• Study circles
What are the
strengths of this
technique?
• Uses a random
scientific sample
• Clarifies values
• Quantifies
opinion shifts
• Generates media
attention
• Is cost-effective
• Uses a random
scientific sample
• Allows for indepth, technical
issue exploration
• Incorporates
expert views
• Avoids media
spotlight
• Engages large
segments of the
public
• Cultivates shared
agreement
• Uncovers public
priorities
• Generates media
visibility
• Is cost-effective
• Reaches large
numbers of
citizens
• Reinforces
leadership
role of public
officials and
experts
• Engages the
public in
follow-up
• Builds new skills
• Engages
citizens in their
community
• Distributes
information
collection
widely
Source: Adapted from OECD, 2003.
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Using Deliberative Democracy
as a Tool for Citizen Engagement
Deliberation deepens a basic tenet of American
democracy: that placing citizens closer to the affairs
of government strengthens representation, transparency, and accountability, and can improve results.
The most critical distinction between deliberative
forms of public participation and traditional techniques of public engagement is that deliberation
emphasizes information processing (meaning-making)
as much as information exchange (upstream and
downstream communication). Deliberative democracy advances richer forms of public participation
that engage citizens in structured dialogue around
focused policy issues, yielding benefits to participants and sponsors that extend well beyond the
collection of useful information. Democratic deliberation augments participants’ levels of knowledge
about issues, cultivates trust, builds civic capacity,
and, over the long term, may increase general levels
of civic engagement and political participation.
Deliberation enables groups of citizens to come
together in a non-coercive environment to learn
about, discuss, and ultimately render their recommendations for action to public officials. During
deliberation, participants “consider relevant facts
from multiple points of view, converse with one
another to think critically about options before them
and enlarge their perspectives, opinions, and understandings.”7 In the very best cases, these kinds of
thoughtful policy forums directly influence agency
policies and programs. Democratic deliberation has
been experimented with in a range of settings within
and outside of government, both online and faceto-face. While there are very few examples around
the world where citizen deliberation has taken root
within government as an “institutionalized practice”
(for example, participatory budgeting in Brazil and
consensus conferences in Denmark), a growing
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IBM Center for The Business of Government
number of experiences at all levels of government
indicate that deliberation is increasingly seen as a
legitimate and effective technique for governments
to partner with citizens in policy development and
decision-making processes.
Deliberation is an important improvement to traditional information exchange models of public
involvement—surveys, public hearings, public comment periods, and so on—through which individuals
or organizations state their viewpoints, and the role
of government is to collect these views and serve as
an arbiter of public opinion. Through deliberative
information processing models of citizen engagement, participants come to a shared understanding
of underlying issues and trade-offs and, as a result,
are collectively prepared to make substantively better policy recommendations (Jones 1994, p. 21).
Such processes can reduce friction and competition
between interests, and citizens experience greater
satisfaction with the process when agencies ensure
that public input is accounted for and reflected in
the final decisions.
One of the greatest challenges in making use of
deliberative forums lies in translating the shared
understanding and resulting views of deliberators
into public will. As many commentators have noted,
deliberation yields insight into what the general
public would think if they had sufficient opportunity
for deliberation or through other means had become
fully informed about the issues at stake. However,
once a group of citizens has participated in deliberation, their views no longer represent a “snapshot”
of the views currently held by the general public:
After deliberation, participants represent a unique
group within the population whose views may differ
dramatically from the snap judgments of the public
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
captured by traditional survey methods. Therefore,
two critical efforts must be made when using deliberative forums. First is to ensure that the deliberative
forum carries with it legitimacy in the public eye, that
the forum is visible, inclusive, and transparent. The
second critical factor is that the results of the deliberation must be broadly distributed to the general public and accompanied by opportunities for feedback.
Characteristics of Face-to-Face
Deliberation
Deliberation can be distinguished from other forms
of public involvement in its emphasis on individuals being willing to examine solutions in terms of
a common best interest, i.e., the interest of one’s
neighborhood, community, or program as a whole.
Deliberation also presupposes that no individual
holds the best answer to a public problem; rather,
the process of structured conversation will yield
optimal solutions for impacted parties and the
public at large. Finally, deliberation differs from,
for example, negotiation in that participants are
usually not coming to the table with strong ideas
about where they will or will not compromise on
alternatives to accommodate the needs of others.
Instead, participants come prepared to engage in the
free and equal sharing of information that will assist
everyone to arrive at reasonable, if not ultimately
more just and practicable, outcomes.
Several guiding principles of public deliberation
distinguish it as an approach to citizen participation
from more commonly used techniques.8 These are:
•
•
Clarify values. Values-clarification exercises make
clear the basis from which decisions among
policy alternatives are made. Values clarification
can provide useful guidance to policy makers
when trade-offs are concerned—for example,
when the potential long-term effects of a decision are measured against short-term gains or
losses. Values-clarification exercises are seldom
included in information-exchange processes that
tend to stress preference aggregation and maximization based on a quantitative analysis.
Focus on action. In the best of circumstances,
the “focus on action” is in the form of a commitment by decision makers to incorporate the
results of deliberation into policy. In some situations—for example, study circles processes—
deliberation efforts result in actions that citizens
and their organizations can take themselves.
•
Avoid predetermined outcomes. Sponsors and
participants in an authentic deliberation do not
come with a pre-existing commitment to a particular outcome or course of action. A deliberative
dialogue is not a pro forma exercise to convince
the public of a course of action, nor is it a forum
for one participant or group to persuade others
to agree to a pre-defined proposal.
•
Maximize information sharing. Recognizing that
the likelihood and quality of mutually satisfactory
outcomes will increase with the free exchange
of knowledge and experiences, information in a
deliberative forum should be complete, balanced,
and free-flowing.
•
Facilitate small group discussion. Enabling people to engage with each other in groups of nine
to 15 optimizes the opportunity for each participant to meaningfully contribute to the conversation and to feel heard. As groups increase in size,
intimacy, trust, and individual voice are lost as
each participant has less opportunity to speak.
•
Engage relevant authorities. To ensure an impact
on policy making and program development,
decision makers and other authorities relevant
to the issue under discussion should be a part
of the process. Decision makers, like citizens,
are disinclined to support policy proposals over
which they have little influence or responsibility.
Five Rationales for Deliberation
There are essentially five rationales for citizen deliberation in democratic governance.9 Each implies a
set of outcomes that offer compelling reasons for a
manager to choose what can be a time-consuming
and arduous organizational effort. While no single
rationale should be taken as a central or primary
justification for deliberative approaches to governance, together they offer a complete picture of
successful public engagement.10 The five common
rationales for public deliberation are:
1. Citizen participation in policy formulation
and decision making can reduce conflict. This
instrumental rationale argues that, by involving
all the perspectives of community members who
will be impacted by the policy outcome—and
the competing interests—in governance pro-
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
cesses, consensus develops around politically
reasonable outcomes and lays the groundwork
for successful implementation. Several senior
managers interviewed for this report noted
the connection between reducing conflict and
reducing costs that came as a result of good
citizen engagement practice. In the case of a
major, multi-year highway project in Australia,
an excellent citizen engagement process costing
upwards of $500,000 yielded $2.5 million in
overall project savings that came from the
elimination of costs associated with delays and
litigation (Broderick interview, 2005).
A critical factor in reducing conflict is raising
trust among the parties involved; without trust
it can be extremely difficult and costly to get
work done. In the case of government-funded
clinical research, for example, one health sciences specialist at the National Institutes of
Health (NIH) observed, “Our role is to build
and retain trust so that people can understand
and enroll in clinical trials, and involving the
community in the research process helps build
that trust (Siskind interview, 2005). Another official interviewed, a senior scientist at the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention, reflected,
“In the case of a highly polarized conflict over
a government science policy, I knew that doing
more research was not going to solve the problem. I saw that this was a relationship issue, a
trust problem, and not a missing data problem.
We in government needed to do work together
with citizens and stakeholders that would be
trust building. I picked the subset of science
policy, which involves values, as the place to
engage the public and do work together, because
citizens are the experts on our values and they
should be at the table when both science and
values are under consideration” (Bernier interview, 2005).
2. Deliberative citizen participation can lead to
better, longer lasting, and wiser policy choices.
The substantive rationale holds that, given the
multiple dimensions of policy outcomes, relying
solely upon expert and/or elite perspectives is
limiting. Citizens have a good sense of their own
needs, and uncovering their knowledge through
deliberation can contribute valuable policy information that would otherwise be overlooked.
To illustrate the point, one Federal Highway
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IBM Center for The Business of Government
Administration planner noted how, in the case of
a light-rail project in San Francisco, a community engagement process uncovered a disconnect
between agency assumptions and the actual
priorities of impacted communities. The agency
had prioritized commuter time saving (speed)
while the community had greater concerns for
pedestrian traffic and children at play (safety).
As a result of a carefully planned community
engagement process, the “solution” was designed
as a slower-speed light rail that was better integrated with street life (Kuehn interview, 2005).
3. Citizen involvement in decision making is
something governments should do. This is the
normative rationale, and is grounded in something of a republican reading of liberal democratic theory. Such a view holds that citizens,
as members of a political community, have certain rights to self-government, among them the
right to a say in the decisions that impact their
lives. “It’s the right thing to do,” one official
responded, “to involve the community that
you are doing research on and for” (Siskind
interview, 2005).
4. Deliberation builds citizen competence. The
civic rationale makes the case that, in addition
to contributing to greater citizen awareness of
issues and the competing points of view that
surround those issues, citizen involvement through
policy deliberation helps to cultivate the skills of
rational dialogue, active listening, and problem
solving. A director at the Department of Justice
noted how, through promotion and training of
youth in community mapping—a process in
which young people go out into the community
and identify what they consider to be resources
or assets in their neighborhood—scores of young
people have been trained to be data collectors
and conduct data analysis (Delany-Shabazz
interview, 2005). Thus, a young generation of
community residents has developed a new set of
skills that can be tapped as a future community
resource while contributing to their individual
lifelong prospects.
An important variation of the civic rationale,
particularly for residents of poor communities,
is the empowerment rationale, which advocates
citizen participation to share authority, as well
as the opportunity to problem solve and improve
their circumstances by impacting policies that
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
affect them. Deliberation thus builds capacity
for solving public problems within communities
over time, reducing the community’s dependence
on outside resources.
5. Citizen participation cultivates mutual understanding; builds bonds of trust among citizens,
decision makers, and governing institutions;
and can effect changes in political attitudes
and behavior. This social capital rationale suggests that deliberation can re-engage citizens in
the political life of the nation by giving them a
real stake in outcomes and, as a result, reverse
long-term declines in political and civic engagement.11 Such effects are not trivial, as they lie at
the heart of a thriving nation.
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Deliberative Democracy:
Face-to-Face
Models of Face-to-Face Deliberation
by the National Academy of Sciences, brings
together a representative sample of 14 citizens in
a “panel” that meets over the course of several
weekends to explore complex technical issues,
usually those that relate to technology assessment
and science policy and their broad impacts
throughout society. Citizen panelists and experts
engage in question-and-answer sessions that are
open to the public; panelists then discuss the
information before them, weigh policy options,
and present their recommendations to key
decision makers in a final report. Consensus
conferences have been used to engage the public
around telecommunications policy, bioengineering, and, most recently, nanotechnology.
Face-to-face deliberative forums are being carried
out today in numerous settings, from civil society to
government agencies. Among the most promising
techniques to integrate public deliberation into
agency decisions are:
•
•
•
24
ChoiceWork Dialogue, developed by Viewpoint
Learning, is a public opinion research method
that brings together a representative sample of
around 40 citizens to work through the choices
and trade-offs that public decision making must
address. ChoiceWork Dialogues incorporate the
use of scenarios and emphasize values-oriented
discussion as opposed to information-seeking
conversations, as participants develop solutions
with which everyone can live. Recommendations
from the group are supplied to sponsoring agencies. ChoiceWork Dialogues have been used to
address a range of issues in the U.S. and Canada,
including land-use planning, state and local
governance, healthcare, aging, and housing.
Citizens Jury, developed by the Jefferson Center,
brings together a scientific, random sample of 18
citizens representing the target population for up
to three days of in-depth examination of a critical
public issue. Participants are supplied with background materials, hear testimony from experts in
related fields, are asked to weigh different points
of view, and through deliberation render a final
decision about the best course of action. Citizens
Juries have been used in communities across the
country to address numerous state and national
issues, including solid waste management, healthcare, climate change, and the federal budget.
Consensus Conference, developed by the Danish
Board of Technology and now being studied
IBM Center for The Business of Government
•
Deliberative Polling, developed by the Center for
Deliberative Polling at the University of Texas–
Austin, brings together a random, scientific
sample of 200 to 500 citizens to discuss issues
in depth over the course of two days. Polled on
their views before coming together, citizens are
provided with carefully framed discussion guides
and participate in a series of structured small
group conversations and question-and-answer
sessions with experts. Participants are polled
at the end of deliberations, and the results are
compared to calculate opinion change. Results
provide decision makers with a snapshot of
how citizens would be likely to respond to an
issue if they had the opportunity to become fully
informed. Deliberative Polls have been conducted
around energy policy, U.S. foreign policy,
healthcare, and municipal planning.
•
Issue Forums, developed by the National Issues
Forums Institute and the Kettering Foundation,
involve variously sized groups of citizens who
come together to explore public matters. Carefully
framed background materials and skilled facilita-
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
tors guide discussion. Group members are polled
at the end of the forum, and results of the poll
are made available to decision makers. Local
Issue Forums have been used to discuss a range
of issues including gun violence, healthcare,
genetically modified foods, and immigration.
•
•
•
Study Circles, developed and promoted by the
Study Circles Resource Center and often employed
as part of democratic organizing efforts, involve
large numbers of people in discussion among
diverse groups of eight to 12 participants. These
groups come together during the same period
of time (a weekend to several weeks) to develop
solutions to a common concern. Communitywide study circles culminate in an “action
forum” where all participants from study circle
groups throughout the community come together
to develop an action strategy to solve a common
problem. Study circles have been used in communities across the country to tackle a range
of issues including education, racism, and
police relations.
21st Century Town Meeting, developed by
AmericaSpeaks, brings together diverse, demographically representative groups as large as
5,000 citizens to discuss an issue and work
through options in small groups, usually over
the course of a day. Neutral and balanced background materials on issues are used to inform
discussion, and experts and policy makers
are present to participate in table discussions.
Through the integration of networked laptop
computers at each table and wireless keypad
polling, results from small group conversations
are shared with the entire group, prioritized,
and reported to decision makers at the end of
the day. The 21st Century Town Meeting process
has been used in numerous public deliberations
including a nationwide discussion on Social
Security reform, planning the redevelopment of
the World Trade Center site in New York City,
and as a biennial citywide process for strategic
planning in Washington, D.C.
Citizens Assemblies, developed by the Liberal
Party in British Columbia to address electoral
reform, bring together a random selection of
citizens composed of one male and one female
from each electoral district within the province. In the case of the recent British Columbia
Citizens Assembly on Electoral Reform, this
number was 161, including two aboriginal
members and the chair of the Assembly. The
Citizens Assembly process is composed of
three distinct phases:
1. Learning, during which Assembly members
interact with subject-matter experts
2. Public hearings, during which Assembly
members have the opportunity to learn
about local dimensions of the issue and
hear public concerns
3. Deliberation, during which Assembly
members come together to synthesize their
learning and make a final recommendation
to the public for a vote
Further experiences with the Citizens Assembly
process are beginning to surface in Canada and
around the world, including Toronto and the
Netherlands.
The methods outlined above have at least five features in common:
1. They use “balanced” or “neutral” background
materials.
2. They are structured around small group dialogue.
3. Emphasis is on learning through exploration of
competing perspectives on an issue.
4. New knowledge is expected to inform individual
and group recommendations on the issue or
problem at hand.
5. “Findings” from discussion are made available to
community members and leaders in a final report.
While most of these forums have a more than 10year history of use in the U.S. and abroad, few of the
experiences have taken place under the auspices of
the federal government, with an eye toward impacting federal policy and decision making. In the case of
the Citizens Assemblies, the exercise was carried out
under the auspices of a Provincial Authority. The critical next step in the evolution of deliberative democracy
in administrative decision making will be to experiment with, adapt, and institutionalize these techniques
to ensure they align with administrative goals of quality, efficiency, validity, and reliability. To date, only the
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Danish Consensus Conference, as it is applied in
Denmark today, has been institutionalized into government decision making, in this case the Danish
Parliament. One-time experiments like the closely
watched British Columbia Citizens’ Assembly on
Electoral Reform12 are providing new momentum for
the movement; long-standing initiatives like Participatory
Budgeting in Brazil are being studied to understand
their reproducibility in other governance contexts.
Because much of the practice-based expertise in
deliberative democracy resides outside of government, organizers and proponents of each deliberative
event must, on a case-by-case basis, forge their own
relations with government, usually—but not always—
the sponsoring agency, to achieve any impact on policy and outcomes. In the case of a few recent (and
landmark) pieces of legislation, such as the Health
Care That Works for All Americans Act (S.581, 2003)
and the 21st Century Nanotechnology Research and
Development Act (S.189, 2003), specific provisions
for deliberative activities have been made, with
resources earmarked to ensure that they take place.
Deliberation in Practice
The following pages explore examples of efforts to
inform government decision making. The specific
policy domains selected for focus include land-use
planning, budgeting and finance, the environment
and natural resource management, and science and
technology. We selected these four domains in part
for the practical reason that good examples of practice exist, and for the immediacy with which these
domains can be experienced by citizens. Land-use
planning, budgeting, environmental regulation, and
science have deep impacts on the quality of life for
citizens, and policy design is often guided by values that are difficult to uncover through traditional
means of public involvement.
Land-Use Planning
Community design (also known as “participatory
planning”) emerged from “a growing realization
that mismanagement of the physical environment
is a major contributing factor to the social and
economic ills of the world and that there are better
ways of going about design and planning” (Sanoff,
2000, p. ix). While most local and state governments, and federal agencies like the Department of
26
IBM Center for The Business of Government
Housing and Urban Development and the Federal
Highway Administration, have guidelines that mandate public input on design and planning proposals, these processes are rarely deliberative and too
often fail to engage large portions of the public. In
typical planning forums—such as public hearings,
community meetings, and focus groups—the general public, if involved at all, is provided a set of
proposals and asked for feedback, most often in the
form of individual testimony. These forums do not
encourage genuine public discussion of the proposals and their underlying assumptions, nor do they
seek new solutions. Rather, these forums frequently
privilege narrow voices with a vested interest in
the outcomes. As a result, such forums can feel
manipulative, designed to justify a particular course
of action before the public. “Hearings,” one scholar
has recently written, “allow officials to deflect criticism and proceed with decisions that have already
been made” (Adams, 2004, p. 44). Ironically, while
formal public hearings are commonly used, studies
have found that they generate less public participation and less satisfaction among participants than
other formats (Adams, 2004; Innes and Booher,
2004). The planner John Forester has written,
Even sophisticated accounts in political
science often ignore the real probing and
transformation of interests that occur in
political processes. In the design and planning professions, too, we may lapse into
truisms of “compromise,” “fundamental”
differences, and “trade-offs” as we fail to
realize how parties can learn how their
wants, interests, preferences, and priorities
can shift and evolve in planning and design
deliberations (Forester, 1999, p. 62).
One recent study found that the participation
requirements in most state growth management laws
were general, providing little direction or guidance
around improved techniques for public engagement
(Brody et al., 2003). As a result, planning proposals
lack a critical element of the public response: a
considered, shared assessment of the benefits and/or
costs of specific proposals to the community at large,
and suggestions for compromise or new solutions.
Planning initiatives that encourage the active
involvement of citizens and make use of a variety
of techniques are the ones that generate the greatest
levels of citizen participation and public support.
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
The Future of San Diego’s Airport
Like many municipalities across the U.S., San Diego
County has experienced dramatic growth in the
last decade, which requires the city and county to
deal with a complex range of issues. One of those
is ensuring easy air travel for city residents and visitors while mitigating the impact of a busy airport in
a city whose residents enjoy a remarkable quality of
life. To address this tension, the San Diego County
Regional Airport Authority conducted a series of
six citizen dialogues in partnership with Viewpoint
Learning, developers of the ChoiceWork Dialogue
approach to public deliberation. The dialogues
were designed to uncover residents’ views about
the existing airport and “how their views evolved
as they came to terms with the pros and cons of
four possible ways of addressing the airport issue”
(Viewpoint Learning, 2004).
The six ChoiceWork Dialogues, which each
engaged a total of 224 participants randomly
selected to be representative of the general county
population, took place in March and April of 2004.
The dialogues focused on the kind of airport citizens
desire and their top priorities for air travel and the
future of the region. The results of the discussions
will inform the design of an airport solution and site
selection that will be voted on by county residents.
Each of the daylong discussions was guided by a
workbook that helped to frame the values-driven
conversation around four possible scenarios for
resolving the county’s airport needs:
•
Improve the existing airport as much as possible
•
Supplement the existing airport with a second
facility
•
Close the existing airport and replace it with a
single new facility
•
Build a multi-use “aeroplex”
Overall, once the critical issues were clarified and
aligned with participants’ values, the public attachment to the existing airport fell, while support for a
new facility rose. At the same time, the scenario
involving a multi-purpose “aeroplex” to accommodate business, housing, and regional transportation as
well as an airport, proved to be a divisive alternative:
While some participants were enthusiastic about the
high-tech facility, an equal number were deeply
opposed to the congestion and development patterns
associated with the proposal. According to a report
of the proceedings of the discussions, the Airport
Authority must now make careful choices as it moves
forward with a ballot initiative to take to the public.
The critical tension, the report indicates, will be
whether “people feel a decision is being rammed
down their throats at the behest of business or governmental interests” (Viewpoint Learning, 2005,
p. 23). If so, the report warns, “they will opt for
a known quantity, however inadequate.… It is especially vital that the public’s input be seriously considered and that the public feel that this is the case”
(Viewpoint Learning, 2005, p. 24). As a result, a broad
effort to raise awareness of the findings among San
Diegans has been initiated by the Airport Authority
and will continue up to the 2006 vote.
Resource Allocation and Spending Prioritization
Decision making around resource allocation and
spending prioritization has a very direct impact
on citizens; as a result, their participation in these
decisions should be authentic and consequential.
Unfortunately, many cities and states rely on the
referendum process to involve citizens in budgetary
matters. These processes are often highly politicized,
overly influenced by moneyed special interests,
and aimed simply at defusing contentious issues as
opposed to actually resolving them. Alternatively,
the participatory budgeting process (PB), developed
in Brazil during the 1980s, offers a deliberative,
publicly spirited approach to engaging citizens in
the allocation of scarce financial resources.
Participatory budgeting, defined broadly, is a movement to make transparent and subject to public
influence the expenditures of government. Specifically,
participatory budgeting commonly refers to discussiondriven processes through which citizens debate,
analyze, prioritize, and propose public expenditures
and investments to government. To date, most
experiments in participatory budgeting have been
conducted at the city level, with a few successes
being “scaled up,” as in the case of Brazil, where
initial success in the southern state of Rio Grande do
Sul has shaped budget processes in several Brazilian
states. In some cases, the participatory budgeting process can also include public monitoring and evaluation of budget implementation, as has been tested at
the local level in parts of Africa and Asia. Stakeholders
in a participatory budget process usually include
the general public, particularly poor and vulnerable
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
populations, and organized civil society groups such
as labor unions and community-based organizations.
Citizen Summits in Local Government
While the participatory budgeting movement itself
has not made significant inroads within the U.S.,
experimentation with participatory fiscal processes
can be found in several U.S. cities. One instructive
example of a process with similarities to PB has
been taking place in Washington, D.C. since 1999:
Mayor Anthony Williams’ “Citizen Summit.”
Moved by a profound sense of distrust between citizens in the District of Columbia and their government,
and fueled by a citywide appetite to release the District
from the authority of a federal Financial Control
Board, Mayor Williams embarked on an ambitious
plan to transform governance in the District of
Columbia (Potapchuk, 2002). In partnership with
AmericaSpeaks, over the course of six years the
mayor’s office has held three District-wide “21st
Century Town Meetings,” through which more than
10,000 residents have deliberated about the city’s
spending priorities and made recommendations
for change.
What is unique about this combination of deliberation and city administration is the attention given to
ensuring that there is an ongoing—as opposed to a
“one-off”—mechanism for citizen engagement in the
budget process. Residents have attended Citizen
Summits with concerns about safety, education,
youth outcomes, housing, and government responsiveness, among other issues. Citizens have accomplished some significant changes as a result of their
influence and involvement with summits:
•
28
In 2001, they helped secure an additional
$710 million for education, $10 million for senior
services, and 1,000 new drug treatment slots.
•
In 2003, they were instrumental in obtaining an
additional $25 million for a housing trust fund
and $2 million for citizen involvement.
•
In 2004, citizen input, in part, resulted in over
$300 million more for education and nearly
$20 million for more police and juvenile-related
initiatives.
•
Cross-agency teams were created to improve
service delivery.
IBM Center for The Business of Government
•
A Youth Council, created by law, now reviews each
city budget before it goes to the City Council.
The summits, and their resulting impact on the city’s
strategic plan, address six crosscutting governance
areas, or “themes,” of the Williams administration
developed in 1999: Building and Sustaining Healthy
Neighborhoods, Investing in Children and Youth,
Strengthening Families, Making Government Work,
Economic Development, and Unity of Purpose and
Democracy (Potapchuk, 2002). In conjunction with
the popularly developed strategic plan, the mayor
has also created “scorecards” that track the achievement of commitments and deadlines set by citizens
for District government departments and agencies
during the summits and follow-up processes.13 A
fourth Citizen Summit was held in November 2005.
Environment and Natural Resource Management
Many federal agencies have used multi-stakeholder
and consensus processes to successfully involve
sectors of the public in natural resource management and regulatory decisions. These efforts can
be traced at least as far back as the Bureau of Land
Management’s call for public input in an article
that appeared in a May 1974 issue of the Journal of
Range Management, in which the authors identify
a growing demand for participation in government
decision making “throughout society” (Irland and
Vincent, 1974). Subsequent work in this field has
resulted in the creation of numerous “public participation” offices in a range of state and federal
agencies involved in natural resource management.
However, the definition and quality of citizen
involvement has not been subject to a common
test, and there remains little institutional capacity
to make good use of the substantial information
received from the public.
Rule making is one example of a regulatory process
for environmental stewardship. Rule making is a
procedure through which federal agencies translate
broad congressional legislation into specific regulations. Rule making generally takes place under
requirements of the Administrative Procedure Act
(APA), which states that “the agency shall give interested persons an opportunity to participate in the
rule making through submission of written data,
views, or arguments, with or without opportunity for
oral presentation” (APA, Title 5). Rules cover a wide
swath of activity, and may govern the release of envi-
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
ronmental toxins or access to public lands.
According to APA requirements, an agency must
respond to any substantive input received during public comment period. These requirements make rule
making an attractive prospect for deliberative democrats, in particular following efforts to bring rulemaking dockets online throughout the Federal
Document Management System (FDMS).
At present, the government portal Regulations.gov
has taken rule making online, and civil society groups
like Information Renaissance14 are making significant
efforts to expand the scope of public involvement in
rule making and augment its deliberative potential.
Citizens Jury on Global Climate Change
In May 2002, the U.S. Environmental Protection
Agency’s Global Programs Division partnered with
the Jefferson Center to conduct a Citizens Jury on
Climate Change. The Global Programs Division is
tasked with providing information to the public on
environmental issues of global climate change and
stratospheric ozone depletion. By observing how
informed citizens absorbed information and developed recommendations for the report, the Citizens
Jury was intended to demonstrate how governmental
agencies, business interests, and environmental
groups invested in the topic of climate change could
improve their science and communication materials
through citizen engagement (Jefferson Center, 2002).
In this deliberation, 18 citizens representative of
the population within a 35-mile radius of Baltimore,
Maryland (which includes five states and the District
of Columbia) were selected from a pool of 496
potential jurors to participate in a five-day process
that included expert witness testimony, citizen deliberation, and the production of a final report to the
EPA. The project was overseen by an advisory panel
composed of 13 individuals highly knowledgeable
about the issues surrounding global climate change
who guided the jury organizers through the identification of key topics related to climate change,
development of the agenda, and witness selection.
In addition to carefully prepared background materials, jurors were aided in their deliberations by “hearings” over three days that covered topics such as
scientific, technology, and economic issues; poten-
tial impacts; uncertainty; mitigation and adoption
strategies; and advocate visions. Functioning much
like the familiar juries of the court system, participants learned the facts and science behind global
climate change and had the opportunity to come to
a shared agreement on the most important dimensions of the issue and recommend the best course of
action for government to raise awareness of climate
change. The jury’s findings were clarified by hand
vote and in individual written surveys and compiled
into a final report to the Global Programs Division.
Science and Technology
Citizen participation in the assessment of new
technologies is a crucial, emerging area for work in
the 21st century. The rate of change in this field is
breathtaking as new technologies are rapidly introduced into almost every facet of daily life. Yet the
field also is increasingly controlled by private interests. With little room for public debate—and even
less oversight or autonomy—myriad technologies are
working their way into Americans’ lives. For example, genetically modified organisms are increasingly
a part of our food, cosmetics, and medical supply.
Pathogens introduced through chemical and biological innovation in numerous sectors make their way
into our water, air, and soil systems. Proposals for
alternative energies come and go. And computer
automation continues to transform the way producers,
retailers, and customers interact, with little public
deliberation around the social trade-offs.
Many argue that questions of technological innovation and its impact on society, the economy, and
the environment are too complex to put before average citizens. But advocates draw attention to growing examples of successful citizen involvement in
technology policy that are taking place in Europe,
developing nations, and the U.S. A good example is
the recent national “debate” in the United Kingdom
on the use of genetically modified foods, which is
expected to inform a report to various government
agencies, among them Britain’s Food Standards
Agency; the Department for Environment, Food and
Rural Affairs (DEFRA); and the Parliamentary Office
of Science and Technology.15 Furthermore, because
in many cases experts cannot reliably predict the
impact and associated risks of many emerging
technologies, questions of technology policy often
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
come down to questions of values and choices, risks
and thresholds. In such areas, the public is quite
prepared to understand the issues and make sound
judgment, and indeed must be involved.
Citizens’ Forum on Genetically Modified Foods
In 2001, the National Science Foundation and the
Kenan Institute for Engineering, Technology, and
Science at North Carolina State University convened a Citizens’ Technology Forum on Genetically
Modified Organisms (GMOs). The purpose of the
study was as much to learn about how citizens
deliberate complex scientific issues as to inform
interested federal agencies of public views toward
GMOs. Like the Citizens Jury on Climate Change,
the 2001 Citizens’ Technology Forum was advised
by an “oversight committee” responsible for the
preparation of background materials and the selection of panelists. The committee was composed
of interested professionals in the field, including a
geneticist, a chemist, two science historians, and a
sociologist (Hamlett et al., 2001, p. 3). The 15 participants for the citizen panel were chosen through
a random scientific sample and selected to represent
regional demographic characteristics.
Prior to staging the forum, organizers recruited a panel
of experts that included geneticists, agronomists, biologists, a patent attorney, and a representative of an
activist group. Organizers also developed background
materials drawn from government, university research,
corporations, and public interest groups. The oversight committee reviewed the background materials
to ensure that they were accurate and free from bias.
The Citizens’ Technology Forum took place over a
total of seven days, spread between weekends in July,
August, and September. Participants spent the first two
weekends in “prep school,” becoming acquainted with
one another, the conference process, and the issues.
By the end of their first two encounters, participants
had drawn up a list of five issues important to them
and a list of five specific questions for the expert panel.
These issues were explored in great detail through a
series of question-and-answer sessions with experts
across sectors. Participants came to shared agreements
on their recommendations through a period of discussion, and their findings were summarized in a
final report that went to the conference conveners.
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Table 5: Face-to-Face Deliberation Techniques
Organization
AmericaSpeaks
Approach
21st Century Town
Meeting
Distinguishing Characteristics
• Large-scale forums (100–5,000) engage
citizens in public decision-making processes at the local, regional, and national
levels of governance.
• Participants deliberate at tables of 10,
facilitated by trained facilitators.
• Dialogue is supported by keypad polling,
networked laptop computers, and
(at times) interactive television.
• Demographically representative groups of
citizens are recruited through a variety of
means, including grassroots organizing
and the media.
Notable Examples
• Listening to the City: Rebuilding
Lower Manhattan, 2002
• Neighborhood Action: Washington,
D.C. Strategic Plan and Budget,
1999–2003
• Americans Discuss Social Security,
1997–1999
For more information, visit:
http://www.americaspeaks.org
• Major stakeholders are engaged in the
process and a clear link to decision making
is established from the start.
Center for
Deliberative
Polling
Deliberative Poll
• Dialogues (2–3 days) between a random
sample of citizens who are paid to participate, issue experts, and public officials.
• Deliberations are televised to reframe an
issue in terms that reflect the views of a
representative, informed public.
• Surveys before and after the dialogue
measure the change in opinion that results
from the deliberation.
• Changes in opinion represent the conclusions the public would reach if people
had a good opportunity to become more
informed and more engaged by the issues.
Jefferson Center
Citizens Jury
• Randomly selected panel of about 18 citizens
meets for 4–5 days to examine an issue of
public significance.
• Deliberators serve as a microcosm of the
public. Paid jurors hear from a variety of
expert witnesses and deliberate together
on the issue.
• On the final day of their moderated hearings, jurors present their recommendations
to the public.
National Charrette
Institute
Dynamic Planning
Charrette
• A multi-day process consisting of a series
of feedback loops between public workshops and a design studio.
• Multi-disciplinary design team develops
alternative plans based on public feedback
and presents those plans back to the public
at workshops.
• Over the course of at least four consecutive
days, the plans are refined.
• By the People: America’s Place in
the World, 2003
• Australian Deliberative Poll on
Aboriginal Reconciliation, 2001
• U.S. National Issues Convention,
1996
For more information, visit:
http://cdp.stanford.edu
• Citizens Jury on Global Climate
Change, 2002
• Pennsylvania U.S. Senate Election,
1992
• Presidential Election Issues, 1976
For more information, visit:
http://www.jefferson-center.org
• Dynamic Planning Trainings for
the New York Department of
Transportation, Arizona Department
of Transportation, and the U.S.
Navy, in addition to hundreds of
individuals in public trainings
For more information, visit:
http://www.charretteinstitute.org
• Used for urban and regional planning
processes.
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Organization
National Issues
Forums Institute
Approach
National Issues
Forum
Distinguishing Characteristics
• Structured, local dialogues that occur
across the country around a critical
national policy issue.
• Terrorism: What Should We Do
Now?, 2002
• Dialogues are moderated by trained NIF
facilitators.
• Mission Uncertain: Reassessing
America’s Global Role, 1996
• Nonpartisan “issue books” provide background information and frame the discussion in terms of three policy options.
• Forum results are presented to national and
local leaders.
Public
Conversations
Project
Constructive
Conversations
Community-wide
Study Circles
• Money and Politics, 2001
For more information, visit:
http://www.nifi.org
• Customized, structured dialogues to foster
new relationships among polarized groups.
• Ongoing Dialogues with Pro-Choice
and Pro-Life Leaders (1995–2001)
• Both single session “citizen dialogues” and
multi-session projects.
• Sexual Orientation and the Church
(1998–2003)
• Often small groups (6–8) but sometimes
larger with breakout.
• Maine Forest Biodiversity Project
(1994–1999)
• Special attention given to pre-meeting
preparation, collaborative and appreciative
stance of facilitators, clarity of purpose,
and careful crafting of questions.
Study Circles
Resource Center
Notable Examples
• Multiple groups of 8–15 people within a
community or region meet regularly over
a period of months to discuss a designated
issue.
• At the end of the process, all participants
take part in a community meeting, called
an Action Forum, to create strategies for
the future.
For more information, visit:
http://www.publicconversations.org
• How Should We Move Forward
After 9/11, 2002
• Balancing Justice in New York, 1998
• Race Relations, Lima, Ohio, 1993
For more information, visit:
http://www.studycircles.org
• The objective is often to help people
become more active in their neighborhoods and communities by engaging them
in informed discussions.
Viewpoint
Learning
ChoiceWork
Dialogue
• Daylong (8-hour) structured dialogues in
which up to 40 randomly selected participants learn to see an issue from viewpoints
other than their own.
• Deliberators identify what choices they
are willing to support and grapple with the
trade-offs they are willing to accept.
• Materials present values-based scenario in
citizen language to discuss shared values,
not policy choices.
32
IBM Center for The Business of Government
• Citizen Dialogues on Canada’s
Health Care System
• Citizen Dialogues on the Housing
Crisis in San Mateo County,
California
• Citizen Dialogues on the Canadian
Social Contract
For more information, visit:
http://www.viewpointlearning.org
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Deliberative Democracy: Online
A spectacular array of tools are emerging that give
ordinary citizens a greater “voice” in nearly every
aspect of society today. Called by some “extreme
democracy,” by others “personal democracy,” and
still others “we media,” these tools enable individuals with like interests to find one another; build and
manage constituencies; spark meaningful conversations among diverse groups; publish text, audio, and
video to the web to growing audiences; and collaboratively manage content using blogs, wikis, and
other tools of the networked environment. “On a
typical day,” a recent Pew Internet Project reports,
“5 million people post or share some kind of material on the web through their own blogs” (Pew, 2005,
p. 58). Wikis, collaborative content creation and
document management systems accessible through
a web browser, have demonstrated that groups of
people with no pre-existing ties to one another can
build and manage high-quality and valued content
online. Sophisticated social networking technologies
are being used to create overlapping online communities that have the power to influence political campaigns, break big news stories before mainstream
media, and help individuals and groups gain access
to resources. Neighborhood residents are being
invited to use their handheld devices to identify
community needs and monitor municipal service
delivery through emerging participatory audit techniques. Together, these technologies constitute new
possibilities to strengthen participatory governance.
A study by the Council for Excellence in Government
(CEG) recently concluded that e-government holds
the greatest potential to shift citizens’ thinking away
from the government to our government. In their own
words, “Americans see the benefits of e-government
as more than simply better or more cost-efficient
services; they see it as a means of empowering
citizens” (CEG, 2001, p. 8). E-government, according
to the World Bank, is the use of information technologies to “transform relationships with citizens,
businesses, and other arms of government.” This
includes improved service delivery, citizen empowerment, and more efficient management.16
On any given day, no less than 72 million adult
Americans go online, and fully half access content
through high-speed, “always on” connections such
as DSL and cable (Pew, 2005, 58–60). In just over a
decade, Internet use in the United States has reached
over 60 percent of the population. As a result, the
Pew Internet Project recently reported those who are
not online represent a shrinking minority. While the
Internet has made its presence felt in politics and
society, broad adoption trends have enormous implications for government administration: Americans’ changing habits online yield changing expectations and
possibilities for participation. In its most recent
report, “The Mainstreaming of Online Life,” the Pew
Internet Project identifies two ways adoption trends
are significant:
1. People are using the Internet to create meaningful connections with others and to strengthen
their ties to friends and family.
2. People are becoming more serious about their
work online: The stakes are raised, for example,
when people move from live chats to financial
transactions online.
Of course, these trends are not unique to the United
States. In fact, the changes are taking place more
rapidly in other countries than they are here at
home, such that Internet-enabled devices—from
web-enabled cell phones and handheld devices to
laptop computers—are increasingly commonplace
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Innovations in Online Participation: Neighborhood America
One of the most significant innovators in the field of online public participation and consultation is Neighborhood
America. Since 1999, Neighborhood America has designed structured public comment solutions that enhance
government capacity to collect substantive feedback from the public via the web. Neighborhood America’s consultation tool, known as “Public Comment,” has been used to tackle numerous public policy issues, including
planning, transportation, environmental stewardship, and homeland security.
Neighborhood America’s Public Comment Service is one part of what it calls its “Public Communications
Management” solution, a comprehensive hosted service for project management and public involvement. This
unique combination of team support services and public input has made Neighborhood America an attractive
solution for many agencies that do not have the capacity to quickly design and deploy their own online public
engagement systems. Through techniques like comment moderation, the Public Comment system, integrated into
a web-based collaboration platform, reduces administrative lag during the feedback cycle and enables public
involvement managers to address public concerns with greater substantive and strategic clarity.
Neighborhood America’s service provides several elements that also make its services user-friendly for the
public, including:
•
Image galleries to which the public can contribute, often used for disaster relief and planning consultations
•
A searchable public comment database, increasing the opportunity for participants to understand the views
of others and respond
•
Consultation and project timelines, creating baselines for both agency responsiveness and public expectations
•
A consistent standard of usability and design excellence
Among some of its notable accomplishments, Neighborhood America has provided public engagement services
for Imagine New York (www.imaginenewyork.org), provided the basis for an online memorial design selection
process in Pennsylvania (www.flight93memorialproject.org), and supported multi-jurisdictional collaboration and
public involvement in one of the largest environmental restoration efforts of its kind (xlr8.sfwmd.gov).
For more information, visit www.neighborhoodamerica.com.
tools to access Internet content. As a result, governments are being called to create greater opportunity
for online access to information, services, and interaction with policy makers. Nations at the forefront of
the e-government revolution, such as Canada, South
Korea, and the UK, have taken giant steps toward
modernizing citizen participation by creating policy
frameworks and departments with mandates to coordinate citizen engagement online, including departments responsible for managing online consultation
at the federal level.17 Increasing Internet adoption in
the U.S. constitutes no less of an opportunity than a
challenge for policy makers. More than ever, public
officials can create new and significant channels for
public interaction; at the same time, agencies and
administrators must retool their processes to ensure
the opportunities deepen trust and legitimacy, not
weaken them.
Neighborhood America, one of the most recent
and exciting innovators in the field of online
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IBM Center for The Business of Government
engagement, suggests that new opportunities for
public engagement in the e-government era can
be designed to encourage citizens “to take ownership of a project, issue, rule, legislation, or event”
(Neighborhood America, 2005, p. 9). Neighborhood
America’s “Public Communications Management”
platform, which it makes available to public agencies, provides a spectrum of online management
services that enable information communication,
public input, and back-end support for administrative processes.
Online (or web-enabled) democracy opens a variety
of opportunities for democratic participation: e-voting,
access to information, e-petitioning, and so on. This
guide, however, focuses on forms of citizen engagement that involve deliberation online: processes that
are complementary and analogous to face-to-face
participation, but that deliver unique benefits when
carried out online.
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Online Engagement in Federal
Agencies
In 2001, an e-government report presented by
Senators Fred Thompson and Joe Lieberman, early
visionaries of e-government’s potential, indicated
that less than 1 percent of government-citizen interactions took place online, a rate lagging far behind
commercial interactions. In response, the passage of
the E-Government Act of 2002 has meant that government agencies have been running a full court press
to meet a mandate of bringing all services online.
However, few of these “services” include the use of
interactive tools to deepen democracy through citizen
engagement. Rather, administrative reform online
revolves around improvements in service delivery
(for example, applying for government benefits online)
and communication techniques such as e-mail and
web-based feedback forms. Rarely do these forms of
communication facilitate lateral (citizen-to-citizen)
exchanges of knowledge and learning, and even more
seldom do they fulfill the potential of “government as
convener” or steward of an infrastructure of engagement.
That said, even government adoption of modest online communication tools has had a positive impact: More than a third of respondents in
a recent Pew Internet Life study reported that the
Internet has “improved their dealings with government” (Pew, 2005, p. 62). The same report documents that 38 million Americans have sent e-mail
to public officials and another 29 million have used
government websites to research or apply for benefits. These interactions, the report concludes, have
improved many Americans’ perceptions of government. In fact, 36 percent of Internet users expressed
“high trust” in government compared to 22 percent
of non-Internet users (Council for Excellence in
Government, in Clift, 2004, p. 9). The more responsive government agencies are to the growing public
appetite for online engagement, the more likely
these positive perceptions are to increase.
Challenges to Online Engagement in
Federal Agencies
Many of the barriers to government-wide adoption
of online citizen participation activities are similar
to those that hinder the uptake of citizen engagement
activities generally: fragmented policy frameworks,
poorly coordinated knowledge sharing, and a lack
of incentive structures. But there are four additional
obstacles that uniquely affect the uptake of citizen
participation online:
•
Overriding concerns about customer service
delivery and quality
•
Fears about information quantity over quality
•
Challenges of achieving representation and
equality
•
Inconsistency of website design and user
experience
Customers and Citizens Online
The President’s Management Agenda provided early
policy direction for what has become the federal
e-government initiative, which has established, as a
central priority, improving the timeliness, efficiency,
and cost-effectiveness of citizen-government interactions by bringing them online. Unfortunately, this
means the principal framework for federal online
activity does little to promote meaningful citizen
engagement in democratic governance. The framework does not acknowledge experimentation with
participatory decision making taking place in civil
society and the private sector, and provides little
incentive for agency managers to experiment with
new techniques for citizen engagement.
While information communication and service
delivery are necessary features of any government
improvement strategy, without the third leg of citizen
engagement the present e-government policy framework fails to set a government standard for online
engagement and does not provide instruction to
agencies about how they should think about evolving
channels for citizen engagement online. Existing
policies, in their emphasis on service delivery and
performance, do not keep pace with evolving ideas
about the Internet as vital space for democratic
participation that can improve governance. Vendors
like Neighborhood America, which provide solutions designed to both improve service delivery and
increase citizen engagement, point the way toward
more balanced e-government strategies.
Information Quantity and Quality
Bringing citizen consultation and deliberation processes online can increase the amount of information
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
governments receive, and improve the quality of
that information. However, the quantity of public
input and its quality are functions of the thoughtfulness and diligence of the process through which
engagement is sought. If the method for seeking
input is not well crafted, disaster may result. As one
expert in online rule making recently observed, in
the e-government era, “Information overload strains
agency personnel responsible for responding to input
as well as the public’s ability to sort through the
enormous dockets that are increasingly available
online” (Shulman, 2001, p. 2).
The point is borne out in a recent comment period
opened by EPA on a proposed rule on mercury
emissions, during which the agency received approximately 540,000 comments. As one article reported,
a staff of 15 was tasked with sorting through the
substance of the more than half a million comments,
one third of which were form letters generated by
the online activist network Moveon.org (GCN, 2005).
Few of the e-mails sampled in one study (about one
in 17) contributed unique or new information to
the process. Thus, concerns about the usefulness of
electronic contributions to the policy-making process
are valid.
Contrast that experience, however, with the EPA’s
2001 online dialogue on Public Involvement in EPA
decisions. During this remarkable process, nearly
1,200 citizens from around the country registered to
participate in online discussions intended to inform
EPA’s effort to modernize its public involvement policy. Over two weeks in July, citizens took part in a
series of staged conversations, posting hundreds of
messages in threaded discussions that moved participants through a series of topics. The responses
informed the agency’s draft policy. Analysis of the
online dialogues suggests that, on average, 40 to 60
participants were posting an average of 90 to 130
messages each day, with participants each reading
about 70 responses to each message posted (Beierle,
2002, p. 8). These and other experiences with online
deliberation demonstrate that through better-structured
agency processes, online tools can be used to gather
meaningful and useful input from the public without
overloading the administrative process.
Access and Representation
One of the most frequently raised concerns about the
use of online spaces for citizen participation is the
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IBM Center for The Business of Government
concern that many will be left out of the discussion
because they lack either the access, skills, or motivation necessary to enter these forums. The digital
divide—the gap between technological “haves” and
“have-nots” commonly described across income,
race, gender, and age—exists, although it is closing.
The demographic characteristic that most accurately
predicts whether an individual is more or less likely
to be online is age: Only 25 percent of Americans
65 or older use the Internet. The second most pronounced characteristic is educational attainment:
Only 32 percent of Americans with less than a high
school diploma are likely to be online. The third is
race: 43 percent of African Americans are online,
compared with 59 percent of Hispanics and 67 percent
of white and non-Hispanic Americans (Pew 2005,
p. 63). The factors that contribute to the digital divide
in America are real, and government has a clear set of
challenges around regulating the broadband market
in ways that ensure equitable access to the Internet
for all Americans. The question of who is online will
impact the depth and legitimacy of e-democracy
initiatives at all levels of government.
In addition to differences in who is going online,
there are differences across demographics around
what people are doing online. For example, young
Internet users (those 18 to 29) are more likely than
others to use instant messaging. Women are much
more likely than men to make use of support groups
online (63 percent for women, 46 percent for men)
(Pew, 2005, p. 61). Young Americans aged 18 to 24
constitute 25 percent of adult bloggers, although
they account for only 9 percent of Internet users
(EchoDitto, 2004, p. 10). However, it is the knowledge, skills, and comfort levels associated with these
and other online activities and the way these may
account for participation in online consultation and
deliberation forums that is important.
All of these factors must be taken into account when
public managers plan a public involvement strategy.
Until these gaps are closed, and even after that,
online consultation and deliberation strategies must
be complemented by other techniques to engage the
public. When coordinating online consultation and
deliberation, it is essential that federal managers pay
careful attention to their target population and understand the range of recruitment and engagement
strategies needed to bring these groups into policy
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
consultation and deliberation. As more and more
Americans gain routine access to the Internet, the
difficulties associated with reaching out to and engaging Americans of all backgrounds will be reduced.
and accountable online response process. In the
case of Regulations.gov,22 for example, while the
beginning and end of the comment period are
clear, there is no indication of when the agency
is expected to report back to the public, either
in summary form or in terms of how the information informed the agency’s final decision.
Contrast this with the clear timeline and feedback process outlined at NCIListens.cancer.gov,
part of the National Cancer Institute’s website.
Variation of Government Websites
In addition to slow government momentum for
online citizen participation in federal agencies, our
review finds a lack of consistency across websites
in three areas: interface, tools, and process.
•
•
•
Interface. There is great variation across federal
agencies in the interface design and structure
of information on government websites. As
a result, citizens must orient themselves to a
unique browsing experience at each agency
they visit. The current range is demonstrated
well by a visit to the websites of the National
Park Service18 and the Environmental Protection
Agency.19 Such variation inevitably creates confusion and difficulty in accessing government
services across agency portals.
Tools. Different agencies rely upon different
vendors to provide them with tools for public
interaction, from the management of information
online to interactive features such as e-mail
comment forms, “chats,” online comment, and
consultation. In the fragmented environment of
the federal government online, citizens’ expectations are not portable from one agency to the
next. Thus, for example, the experience of online
consultation at the award-winning National
Cancer Institute site20 is not a “standard” for
public engagement. One cannot expect to find
such design excellence at, for example, the
Department of Housing and Urban Development
online. One reason for these variations arises
from vendor relationships across agencies.
Therefore, while vendors like Information
Renaissance offer process excellence, design
differs dramatically from products that vendors
like Neighborhood America deliver.21
Process. Each agency has its own guidelines
for receiving and responding to public input.
Nonetheless, it does not seem unreasonable
to expect a common statement across federal
agencies to both encourage and define the role
for public participation in any agency’s decisionmaking process. However, there is little to connect a site user’s engagement to a transparent
Challenges to Online Deliberation
We have described in some detail the shortcomings to
current citizen involvement practices online. Addressing
these deficits alone does not get us to the finish line.
Once online engagement capacity is developed, additional obstacles present themselves. Specific challenges
to structuring effective online deliberation include:
•
Information overload. When consultation and
deliberation are moved online, the availability of
information that citizens have at their disposal
increases exponentially. Deliberation forum
designers can add libraries, search engines,
and other information-gathering tools and thus,
paradoxically, improve and confound the deliberative process by introducing both verified and
unverified information.
•
Asynchronous dialogue. Because most online
deliberations occur asynchronously (conversations can be accessed anytime over an extended
period, perhaps weeks), conversation tends to
be asymmetric: driven by a few participants.
Furthermore, individual posts often create subconversations, which in turn can yield less
consideration of a single issue than occurs in
structured face-to-face conversation.
•
Institutional skepticism. The link between public
input and decision makers has been weak in most
online engagement exercises. While this is not a
feature of the technology per se, it is a trade-off
that comes with the territory: Government agencies and decision-making bodies haven’t done
the work to build online tools for deliberation
in administrative process. At the same time,
administrative wariness and skepticism toward
online participation and the capacity of the
public to contribute meaningfully remains high,
framed as it is by experiences when poor process around a contentious issue has produced
a deluge of useless electronic comments.
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
•
Representativeness. The guarantee of representative samples online, and with them achievement
of authentic deliberation, is one that has not been
pushed far enough among online practitioners.
At present, most online practitioners are content
to view the recommendations of their constituent
groups as legitimate. Yet in fact, they may better
reflect simply those with a greater interest in the
issue at hand and/or those with the technological
sophistication to participate comfortably.
Unique Features of Online
Deliberation
Table 6 is a list of key features of online deliberation
that clarifies differences between face-to-face and
online deliberation. Because many of these features
depend upon designer and user choice (many environments are customizable), this list assumes “ideal”
circumstances in which the designer/user would
maximize the application of available features that
distinguish online deliberation from face-to-face.
Online Deliberation: Examples
from Practice
Online deliberations, largely in the form of “consultations” (i.e., input-seeking activities with low influence on
actual policy development) are occurring with increasing frequency on a range of issues, using a variety
of online tools, around the world (see Table 7 on pages
41–42). These government-sponsored activities are
Table 6: Characteristics of Deliberation Online
Feature
Identity
38
Face-to-Face
In addition to physiological factors, participants are generally asked to introduce
themselves as part of trust building.
Online
Users provide as much information as user/
designer wishes shared with the group.
Conversation While similar discussion patterns can and
balance
do emerge, the role of the facilitator has
greater force in bringing everyone into the
discussion.
Conversation is driven by relatively few
posters.23 While there is always a “main
stage” for group discussion, numerous
sub-conversations arise.
Timing
Participants talk to each other “live,” or in
real time.
Most online deliberations are asynchronous,
which means participants can drop in and
out of discussion at will, regardless of time.
Observation
It is difficult, although not impossible,
for researchers and observers to remain
unobtrusive.
Guests and researchers can observe the proceedings of online deliberation unnoticed
and in very large numbers.
Attention
A high value is placed on active listening
by all participants.
Reading comprehension replaces listening
skills. Users must possess basic functional
literacy to acquire knowledge.
Research
It is extremely difficult and cost-intensive
Computer mediation renders discussion
to capture data. Substantial interpretation is recordable, quantifiable, and interpretable.
often required to condense documentation.
Timeline
While many methods are extended over
time, most rely upon a fixed, much shorter
time frame for discussion.
Resources
A weakness is the lack of information
Users can access unique information at any
resources to address concerns as they arise. time to enhance quality and content of discourse. Information can be verified in real time.
Environment
In general, participants have little influence
over the shape of the physical environment.
It certainly cannot be customized for individual participants.
Users can often influence the look, feel,
and content of the online environments,
while joining from a physically comfortable
location.
Location
Participants must travel to a central, physical locale. This naturally excludes some
citizens.
Ability of users to communicate is not
limited to geographic constraints.
IBM Center for The Business of Government
Often takes place over several weeks.
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
expanding opportunities for citizens to impact policy
design and program development and, in a few circumstances, influence a decision or outcome.
reproducible results that should not be viewed
as a representation of the public’s view about
an issue.
•
Created access. Many Americans lack access
to the Internet from home. To compensate for
this gap in potential participation, organizers of
the Online Deliberative Poll provided a desktop
computer, limited Internet access, and training
and technical support to roughly one-third of
the participants.
•
Conducted using voice. The vast majority of
online deliberations use text as the mode of
conversation. The organizers of the Online
Deliberative Poll chose to use a Lotus product
that allowed participants to communicate using
voice over the internet. The decision to use voice
technology helped mediate against variances in
literacy levels and comfort with technology.
Online Deliberative Poll, America’s Role
in the World
The Deliberative Poll, developed by Dr. James Fishkin
at the Center for Deliberative Democracy at Stanford
University, is one of the most important innovations
in public opinion polling today. Yet its formal application as an alternative tool for policy advice and
decision making remains under-explored in the United
States. Dr. Fishkin and his key collaborator, Dr. Robert
Luskin, also at Stanford, have conducted more than
20 Deliberative Polls around the world, including in
Australia, the UK, Bulgaria, Denmark, and the U.S.
The central idea of the Deliberative Poll is that polling
today is flawed, lacking the benefit of the “informed”
views of citizens: Traditional polling catches citizens
“on the spot” and provides respondents little opportunity for reflection upon the questions polled. The
Deliberative Poll is intended to show how the people
would think about issues if they had sufficient opportunity to become fully informed about the issues and
interests at play.
Between December and January 2002–2003, a
Deliberative Poll was conducted for the first time
online, using a unique voice-over-Internet Protocol
(VOIP) design. The first Online Deliberative Poll,
part of “By the People,” a project of MacNeil/Lehrer
Productions, brought together a randomly selected,
representative sample of 283 Americans to discuss
America’s role in the world. Participants were asked
to read background materials developed by the
National Issues Forum that covered four dimensions
of U.S. foreign policy. As a result of the poll, the
website for the “By the People” project concludes,
participants increased their willingness to take
responsibility as Americans for problems around the
world. Coordinators of the poll also recorded statistically significant differences between participant
views and those of a control group.
The Online Deliberative Poll differed from most online
consultation and deliberation efforts in several
important ways:
•
Used a scientific sample. Most online dialogues
rely upon groups of self-selecting participants,
which can lead to non-quantifiable and non-
Online Deliberation on California’s Master
Plan for Education
In June 2002, Information Renaissance (Info-Ren),
a not-for-profit organization based in Pittsburgh and
Washington, D.C., produced an online public dialogue on the California Master Plan for Education
(CAMP) in partnership with the state legislature’s
Joint Committee to Develop a Master Plan. The goal
of the dialogue was to increase the opportunity for
public comments as well as the quality of contributions to the development of the master plan, which
had not been substantively revised since the 1960s.
According to the organizers, the CAMP dialogues
represented “the first time state legislators had been
involved in an online event of this size” (Information
Renaissance, 2003, p. 11). One participant in the
process, State Senator Dede Alpert, chair of the Joint
Committee, remarked that she “had never seen such
an overwhelming interest in shaping public policy”
(Information Renaissance, 2003, p. 9).
Over the course of 10 days of asynchronous dialogue,
nearly 1,000 people took part in the online discussion. Participants were able to learn about the draft
plan, converse with education planners and legislators involved in its design and implementation, and
come to a better understanding of the views within
the group. Broad, but not necessarily diverse, participation was a key goal of the CAMP dialogues,
and as a result involved a large, unusually motivated
and self-selected group with an interest in the topic
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
and a willingness to take part in an extended conversation. While participants in the CAMP dialogues
came from 47 of California’s 58 counties, cities and
suburbs were home to about 77 percent of participants and 20 percent described their location as a
small town or rural area. A substantial majority of
participants (65 percent) worked in the education
sector. More than a third of all respondents, and
50 percent of those who had been less active in
politics, reported that their interest in government
and politics had been increased by the dialogue.
Like many online methods for structured dialogue, the
Info-Ren model is a variation of a threaded discussion
list that incorporates the following central features:
40
•
Broad outreach. In an effort to engage a diverse
group of participants, including the relevant
stakeholders, in dialogue, Info-Ren conducts a
substantial public outreach effort that includes
heavy Internet outreach, press coverage, and the
placement of information in newsletters of relevant organizations.
•
Background materials and website. Often
referred to as a “briefing book,” Info-Ren develops
or links to extensive background materials that
are made available electronically, and crossreferenced in the discussion questions. A website
is developed for each dialogue; both the briefing
book and message archive are searchable.
•
Agenda and discussion questions. Info-Ren
worked closely with the staff of the Joint
Committee to develop a structure that would
move participants through many of the critical
areas for reform covered by the master plan.
•
Expert panels. One of the unique and more substantive aspects of the CAMP dialogues was the
ongoing participation of “panelists”: policy makers from the Joint Committee and its working
groups. While it is not uncommon to involve
“experts” in online deliberation, it is unusual for
policy makers to spend such an extended period
of time in a single online forum (10 legislators
agreed to act as panelists, several on multiple
days). Joint Committee staff were also active in
the discussions. A final technique developed
by Info-Ren is the online “roundtable,” during
which panelists are asked to discuss a particular
topic in greater detail.
IBM Center for The Business of Government
While the structure of the online deliberation was
not different from past conversations hosted by the
organizers, what made this effort noteworthy was
the demonstration that the “interested” public can
tackle a complex policy issue and provide substantive and useful input to education decision makers.
Most of the Joint Committee staff reported positive
views about online dialogue as a tool for public
involvement in policy formulation (Information
Renaissance, 2003, p. 4).
Listening to the City Online Deliberation
In the spring of 2002, AmericaSpeaks partnered
with the online dialogue group Web Lab24 to create
a forum for structured public deliberation around
the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site in
the wake of the September 11 tragedy. The partnership resulted, in part, from AmericaSpeaks’ desire
to re-create online the structure of dialogue that
takes place during its 21st Century Town Meeting.
Designed to accommodate up to 2,500 participants
in small group discussions, the “Listening to the
City (LTC) Online Dialogues” represented one of the
largest efforts in the U.S. to engage a sizable sample
of the public in serious conversations around the
topics of architecture, land-use planning, and economic development.
The online dialogues occurred July 30–August 12 and
involved 586 participants working in a total of 26
small discussion groups (Civic Alliance, 2002, p. 18).
While groups were designed to accommodate as
many as 30 participants, average group size was 25
members (with a low of 19 and a high of 32). Group
assignments were made randomly by computer from
a pool of 818 potential participants; of those assigned
to a group, 76 percent (623) contributed at least one
post to the conversation. While participants were
assigned to groups with the goal of maximizing diversity, it was difficult to discern from available data
the demographic composition of groups. A cursory,
unscientific analysis of participants’ personal introductions suggests that participants came from a range
of professional backgrounds, including the displaced
and unemployed, and a range of life experiences,
including time spent in New York City (from three
years to a lifetime). Participants ranged in age from
20 to 74, and included a good mix of married and
single individuals. A significant majority of participants
were drawn to the online dialogues as a result of
a personal connection to the September 11 attacks
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Table 7: Online Deliberation Techniques
Organization
Ascentum
Approach
Dialogue Circles
Distinguishing Characteristics
Notable Examples
• Provides consultation and dialogue tools
to government, business, and not-for-profit
organizations.
• Listening to Canadians:
eConsultation on Pension Disability
Plan, 2002–2003
• Can accommodate large and small
groups, organized into “tables” of up to
14 participants.
• Public Input on the Future of Health
Care, 2002
• Can support synchronous and asynchronous dialogues.
For more information, visit:
http://www.dialoguecircles.com
• Offers a range of customizable participant
and administrator tools, including background materials (video, text, images, etc.),
surveys, scenarios, workbooks, and
calendars.
CitizenScape
Link to Government
Consultation Spaces
• Provides concentrated list of government
actions available for consultation and the
links to get there.
• Offers online dialogue to affect how government actions proceed from planning to
completion.
DELIB
CitizenSpace
• Enables participants to search for,
participate in, see results of, and propose
new consultations.
• “Consultation” limited to reading
background materials, responding to poll
questions, and adding comments.
• Western Australia Citizenship
Strategy, 2004
• Consulting Citizens: Engaging with
Aboriginal Western Australians, 2004
For more information, visit:
http://www.citizenscape.wa.gov.au
• Consultation on Prostitution Law
Reform, 2004
For more information, visit:
http://www.citizenspace.co.uk
• Clean interface includes a progress tracker
and “Fact Bank.”
Denmark National
IT and Telecom
Agency
Danmarks Debatten
• Free eDialogue tool developed by the
Danish National IT and Telecom Agency
to encourage public debate of issues.
• Tool for public officials to use to “qualify”
their decisions.
• Emphasizes well-defined topics, clear
purposes, and (pro)active and dedicated
debate management/moderation.
• County of Funen, Public Debate
on the Regional Plan, 2004
• City of Aarhus, Public Debate on
Traffic Planning and Expenditures,
2003
For more information, visit:
http://www.danmarksdebatten.dk
• Seeks to promote public debate at the
national, county, and municipal levels.
Dialogue by
Design
Small to Large
Group Dialogue
• Provides a range of engagement services,
including consultation, online stakeholder
engagement, and public debate.
• Developed proprietary DialogueDX
platform to collect, collate, and report
information easily and rapidly.
• Breaks consultations into “sessions,” to first
collect individual responses to consultation
questions, then share and invite response
to results.
• Participants interact via facilitator proxy
using e-mail.
• Surrey County Council Waste Plan,
2004
• Taking It On, DEFRA Sustainable
Development Strategy, 2004
• International Finance Corporation
Consultation on Disclosure Policy,
2004
For more information, visit:
http://www.dialoguebydesign.net
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41
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Organization
Fraunhofer
Institut Autonome
Intelligente
Systeme
Approach
Dito2.0
Distinguishing Characteristics
• Platform for goal-oriented, moderated
online discussion.
• City of Cologne, “Cologne Rings”
Discussions, 2004
• Seeks to apply tools for e-participation
in municipal decision making, especially
consensus, stakeholder, and planning
processes.
• Esslingen City Dialogue on Budget,
2003
• Tool set includes brainstorming, mind
mapping, and content mining.
Information
Renaissance
Large-Scale Online
Dialogue
• Asynchronous online dialogues, several
weeks long, engage large groups in
discussions of public issues.
• Dialogues include panelists—public officials,
issue experts, and advocacy groups—and
extensive background materials.
• Regular summaries encapsulate daily discussion and enable participants to remain
current without reading all comments.
• Often sponsored by public agencies as part
of their policy-making processes.
Web Lab
Small Group
Dialogue
• Asynchronous online dialogues that distribute participants among facilitated and
unfacilitated groups of 10–15 discussants.
• Takes place over multiple weeks to encourage greater interaction, investment, and
accountability among participants.
• Dialogue monitors track group activity
and intervene as needed.
• Document libraries provide background
material, and polls take the pulse of
participants.
(generally, they either worked nearby or knew someone who perished in or survived the attacks).
The agenda for the online dialogues approximated the
conversation that took place at a larger face-to-face
forum on July 20, 2002, at the Jacob Javits Center,
with two notable exceptions. First, conversations
were focused on “elements of rebuilding” rather than
the proposals for redevelopment originally prepared
by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation
for the July 20 event. These proposals had been
widely criticized at the meeting, and online dialogue
designers felt it would be more constructive to
emphasize the “component features of the various
proposals” that were designed into the original concept plans.25 The second change to the agenda was
the presentation of “rebuilding and revitalization”
topics concurrently rather than sequentially, as was
the case during the face-to-face meeting. The flexi42
IBM Center for The Business of Government
Notable Examples
• “Growing City,” Hamburg, 2002
For more information visit:
http://zeno8.ais.fraunhofer.de/zeno/
• California Master Plan for
Education, 2002
• Public Involvement in EPA
Decisions, 2001
• Americans Discuss Social Security,
1999
For more information, visit:
http://www.info-ren.org
• Listening to the City: Rebuilding
Lower Manhattan, 2002
• Project 540, High School Civic
Engagement, 2002
• What Now: Politics, the Economy,
Your Life, 2001
For more information, visit:
http://www.weblab.org
bility of the technology allowed for several “parallel
conversations” to take place at the same time, which
facilitated cross-fertilization of knowledge across
discussion themes as well as served to engage participants around key areas of interest and knowledge.
Several key features of the Listening to the City online
dialogues are worth highlighting:
•
Use of small groups. Most online deliberation
involves threaded discussion among very large
groups, while conversation tends to be driven
by relatively few posters. While small group dialogue doesn’t necessarily overcome the problem
of asymmetry, it does heighten group members’
sense of “belonging” as well as their opportunity
to be “heard.”
•
“Rounds” of conversation. The LTC online dialogues consisted of several phases, or rounds,
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
of small group discussion that began at the
announcement of a new discussion topic, which
included rebuilding, revitalization, and memorializing. Topics generally included at least three
subtopics and a wrap-up session that served to
“sum up” conversation points. In addition, participants could add their own topics for discussion.
Thus, the range of topics discussed in any group
ranged from 13 to 56.
•
Facilitation split. In an effort to collect information about the quality of online deliberation
among “formally” facilitated groups (those with
a pre-designated professional facilitator) and
“informally” facilitated groups (or “self-regulated”),
the dialogue coordinators assigned facilitators
to all of the even-numbered groups and left
the odd-numbered groups to themselves. There
were, however, “roaming facilitators” on hand
to “lean into” the conversation if intervention
seemed necessary.
•
Theming. Similar to AmericaSpeaks’ “theme
team” that identifies major themes within a
group during conversations, the LTC online dialogues were “themed” in two ways: The roughly
10,000 posts were scanned and sifted through
for important ideas, and each group was asked
to file weekly “discussion summaries” that were
also sifted for areas of agreement, major ideas,
and unique but seemingly important contributions. The results of each round of “theming”
were used to develop polls and to inform the
final recommendations to decision makers.
•
Polling. Voting was conducted at the close of
each “round” of conversation. Results were used
to measure the accuracy of the theming process
and for participants to prioritize their recommendations to decision makers.
The Listening to the City online dialogues were an
exceptional exercise in online citizen engagement
for many reasons, including the resulting substance.
In addition, it was inspiring to see how many groups
that met online formed high levels of trust and support for one another, and their relationships carried
forward after the official term of the online dialogues.
Groups continued to meet face-to-face as well as
online in public forums.
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Conclusions and
Recommendations
Rethinking public engagement is a critical challenge
for federal agencies in the 21st century. In an era of
declining trust in public institutions, public flight from
politics, and urgent issues that require collaborative
solutions, we encourage federal managers to rethink
the way government engages with the public. We want
to stress in particular the emerging role of government as convener, and to think about ways agencies
can contribute to the growth of an infrastructure for
engagement. This means, first and foremost, expanding agency participation techniques to include information-processing methods—specifically, deliberative
techniques that support the general-interest public
in sharing their experiences and perspectives, building knowledge, thinking critically about the issues
and trade-offs, and then building workable solutions.
We have described how a growing number of techniques enable this kind of meaningful citizen
engagement, online and face-to-face, and require
some level of commitment from agency sponsors to
make good use of the input.
•
Involve a demographically representative group
of citizens reflective of the affected community.
•
Facilitate high-quality discussion that ensures all
voices are heard.
•
Produce information that clearly highlights the
public’s shared priorities.
•
Achieve commitment from decision makers to
engage in the process and use the results in the
policy process.
•
Support ongoing involvement by the public on
the issue, including feedback, monitoring, and
evaluation.
There are several rationales for engaging the public
more meaningfully in policy and program development, among them to improve the substance of policy,
reduce conflict while raising trust, cultivate civic
capacity, and enhance the capacity for successful
implementation. The guiding principles for these
kinds of deliberative engagement forums can be
summarized as:
1. Low levels of administrator trust in the quality
of what the public can contribute to the policymaking process. This mistrust is often accompanied by fears of information overload.
•
•
44
Provide accessible information to citizens about
the issues and choices involved, so that they
can articulate informed opinions.
Offer an unbiased framing of the policy issue in
a way that allows the public to struggle with the
same difficult choices facing decision makers.
IBM Center for The Business of Government
Such a shift in the way agencies carry out their public
involvement mandates will, in some instances, require
dramatic changes. Several institutional barriers to
an effective transition toward a more participatory
policy design culture within agencies exist. These
can be summarized as three principal deficits:
2. Uncoordinated, often inconsistent policy
guidelines that do not provide sufficient direction
on the effective use of deliberative engagement
techniques and, in some cases, actually
impose constraints on the options available
to administrators.
3. A lack of intentional citizen engagement knowledgebuilding activities and coordinated information
sharing to promote and improve practice within
and across agencies.
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
In our survey of online practices, we found two
important challenges that limit the success and
uptake of online engagement activities. These are:
1. E-government initiatives’ emphasis on serving
the “citizen as customer” and on achieving
improved service delivery both contribute to an
unbalanced e-government strategy that sidelines
meaningful citizen engagement.
2. A lack of common standards for agency web
presence and online engagement techniques
creates inconsistent and often incoherent online
engagement experiences for citizens, and makes
it difficult for agencies to share learning across
experiences.
Our recommendations to federal managers relate
to these gaps and challenges that we have observed
within current administrative practice. They are
derived from a review of existing practice as well
as recommendations from managers interviewed
for this report. We have made two kinds of recommendations in this report: internal reforms that
agencies can begin to implement on their own,
and external reforms that will require substantial,
nearly government-wide reforms.
The internal reforms that we recommend to agency
managers are:
1. Carry out top-to-bottom review of policy and
practice. An assessment of existing involvement policy and practice will be central to the
development of sustained and successful new
techniques. A focused review and integration
of participative frameworks that affect central,
regional, and state agencies will ensure proliferation of key values, principles, and successful
practice techniques.
2. Create management-level staff positions
focused on improving agency participation.
One of the shortcomings in practice right now
is that public involvement often falls within
“communication” and “public affairs” activities.
Citizen engagement requires its own department, resources, and activities separate from
the information communication, education, and
image-building activities of government.
3. Invest sufficient funding for participation
efforts in program and project budgets.
Building out successful involvement practice
requires anticipation and sufficient resources.
Conflict and friction in policy and program
development should not be an unanticipated
barrier to successful policy development,
and ensuring that the resources are on hand
will enable managers to effectively engage
with the public.
4. Promote experimentation. Agency managers
need to equip themselves with new tools and
approaches to citizen engagement. The very
best predictor of innovation within departments
and agencies is the level of experience held by
managers and staff. It goes without saying that
the more experience agencies have with new
approaches to citizen engagement, the better
prepared managers will be to match the appropriate engagement methods to policy and program development.
5. Measure benefits beyond cost. Agency managers need to think differently about how to
evaluate successful citizen engagement beyond
the layout of public involvement expenditures.
While successful public involvement can reduce
costly litigation and project delays, other
benefits, such as increased trust in the agency
and agency personnel, public education,
and increased civic capacity should be accounted
for as well.
6. Incorporate citizen engagement practices into
performance management review. Performance
management reviews for programs and personnel should incorporate standards for successful citizen engagement practice. Furthermore,
once citizen participation standards are in
place, it may be appropriate in some instances
to develop, along with them, participatory performance appraisal techniques that engage the
public in the performance feedback cycle.
External strategies to create the “infrastructure for
engagement” across federal agencies include:
1. Establish an interagency task force to review
existing policy guidelines. Serious work needs to
be done to identify and resolve inconsistencies
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
and obstacles to good citizen engagement practice that reside in existing policy frameworks.
Either Congress or the president should establish
a neutral, credible body to review the primary
legal frameworks impacting public participation
today and recommend ways those policies can
be updated and improved to account for evolving practice and new opportunities.
2. Adopt consistent federal guidelines for public
involvement. Most, if not all, federal agencies will
benefit from a consolidated framework for effective
citizen participation. To ensure the proliferation
of a culture and practice of participation in
government, oversight agencies like the Office
of Management and Budget and the Government
Accountability Office must provide more explicit
guidelines for deliberative forms of citizen engagement while ensuring that existing policies do not
unnecessarily constrain agency practice.
3. Adapt administrative process. Ensure that the
procedures, budgets, and time cycles for policy
and program development create sufficient
opportunities to include citizen engagement,
achieve an appropriate balance of expert and
public input, and are tied to a transparent and
accountable decision-making structure.
4. Develop assessment frameworks. To improve
the practice of engaging the public in policy
and program development, government-wide
standards of good practice must be in place,
and oversight agencies must have the capacity to measure and evaluate the outcomes of
various techniques across context and purpose.
Until the federal government is able to facilitate
good practice across agencies, departments and
administrators must build learning internally
and create their own mechanisms to share that
knowledge broadly.
5. Encourage exchange across agencies. To facilitate the exchange of learning across federal
agencies, managers will need to proactively
create and seek out networks for the exchange
of best practice information. Agencies like the
EPA, which have taken the lead on rewriting
internal policy and coordinating initiatives like
E-Rulemaking, represent natural hubs for this
activity. Federally established bodies like the
National Academy of Public Administration
could also serve as focal points of this activity.
46
IBM Center for The Business of Government
The next decade will continue to witness rapid
evolution in the way technology and systems thinking impact society. Government is at the center
of these changes in many societies, and the United
States is no exception. To ensure that these changes
are accompanied by maximum benefits to the
public, explicit efforts must be made to support
meaningful citizen engagement. Failure to
adequately address the growing public appetite
for transparency, accountability, and engagement
in decision making risks deepening democratic
deficits and driving up the costs of getting public
business done. Bringing citizens into partnership
in policy design and program development through
evolving online and face-to-face techniques has
the potential to dramatically change the public’s
perception of government, improve the substance
of policy, and improve the prospects for lasting,
successful policy implementation.
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Acknowledgments
The authors wish to thank Alexandra Samuel for her
invaluable contribution in carrying out background
interviews with more than two dozen agency managers and citizen engagement professionals on three
continents. The results of these interviews have influenced significantly the framing of this guide.
We would also like to acknowledge Alexandra and
Stephen Pyser for their early work in reviewing
existing guides to citizen engagement, which had an
important influence over the approach we chose to
take with ours.
Finally, background for this paper, as well as
recommendations of federal managers interviewed,
was provided through the authors’ involvement
in the Deliberative Democracy Consortium
(www.deliberative-democracy.net) and its Link to
Government Work Group. The Link to Government
Work Group is actively working with senior public
officials from several agencies to cultivate a knowledgebuilding network to advance the practice of deliberative
democracy within government.
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Endnotes
1. The language of “empowered” governance mechanisms is drawn from the work of Archon Fung and Erik
Olin Wright (2003), who define Empowered Participatory
Governance (EPG) in three dimensions: deliberation,
civic engagement, and institutional influence. These three
dimensions of EPG are drawn together as a way of measuring the authority and legitimacy of various approaches
to participatory governance.
2. http://www.ombwatch.org/article/articleview/176/
1/67 accessed December 7, 2005.
3. Abigail Williams and Archon Fung. 2005.
Mapping Public Deliberation: A Report to the William and
Flora Hewlett Foundation. np. Cambridge, MA: Kennedy
School of Government, Harvard University.
4. Rebecca Long and Thomas Beierle. 1999. The
Federal Advisory Committee Act and Public Participation
in Environmental Policy. np. Washington, D.C.: Resources
for the Future.
5. Office of Management and Budget,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/fedreg/gpea2.html
accessed December 7, 2005.
6. http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/servicefirst/index/
consultation.htm
7. http://www.deliberative-democracy.net/about/FAQ
accessed October 11, 2005.
8. The authors found Hitchcock, McBurney, and
Parsons. “A Framework for Deliberative Dialogues” (OSSA,
2001) particularly insightful in putting together this list of
distinguishing principles of deliberation.
9. The first three rationales are drawn from
Understanding Risk, by Paul Stern and Harvey Fineberg
(Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1996). The
fourth rationale is concluded from the writing of prominent
scholars such as Benjamin Barber, David Matthews, John
Gastil, and James Bohman. The fifth is our conclusion drawn
from readings in social capital and civic capacity building.
10. The authors recently encountered a nearly identical set of points speaking to the “value and necessity”
48
IBM Center for The Business of Government
of civic participation developed by the U.S. Department
of Energy’s “Smart Communities Network.” These justifications for civic participation are: (1) ensure good plans
remain intact over time; (2) reduce the likelihood of contentious battles before councils and planning commissions;
(3) speed the development process and reduce the cost
of good projects; (4) increase the quality of planning; and
(5) enhance the general sense of community and trust in
government. The report is available at:
http://www.sustainable.doe.gov/landuse/civic.html.
11. A good survey of the range of activities such
deliberation might inspire is outlined by Peter Levine,
in his work The New Progressive Era (Lanham, Md.:
Rowman and Littlefield, 2000).
12. http://wwww.citizensassembly.bc.ca
13. http://dc.gov/mayor/scorecards/index.shtm
accessed October 13, 2005.
14. http://www.info-ren.org
15. A resulting decision in favor of GMO introduction
has sparked widespread protest among civil society groups
in the UK. For more information on these developments,
visit: http://www.foodfuture.org.uk/ and
http://www.organicconsumers.org/ge/ukuproar030804.cfm.
16. http://www1.worldbank.org/publicsector/egov/
definition.htm
17. For example, visit the UK’s Office of the Deputy
Prime Minister, which runs 22 E-Participation initiatives:
http://www.e-democracy.gov.uk/
18. http://www.nps.gov
19. http://www.epa.gov
20. http://ncilistens.cancer.gov
21. Visit Information Renaissance at:
http://www.info-ren.org and Neighborhood America at:
http://www.neighborhoodamerica.com.
22. http://www.regulations.gov
23. Note that this conclusion is drawn from studies of
online discussion boards, e-mail lists, and chat environments
and may be false in the circumstance of actual online
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
deliberation. In point of fact, it is probably too early to
be able to draw such distinct conclusions.
24. http://www.weblab.org/home.html
25. http://dialogues.listeningtothecity.org/WebX?write
[email protected]@.ee7d09f!doc=28
accessed September 30, 2005.
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Selected Resources
Deliberative Democracy Consortium
The mission of the Deliberative Democracy
Consortium (DDC) is to bring together practitioners
and researchers to support and foster the nascent,
broad-based movement to promote and institutionalize
deliberative democracy at all levels of governance in
the United States and around the world.
www.deliberative-democracy.net
Democracies Online
Democracies Online (DoWire) is an excellent resource
on the convergence of democracy and the Internet
around the world. DoWire is a free, low-volume,
moderated blog, e-mail announcement list, and wiki
of best practices.
www.dowire.org
International Association for Public Participation
The International Association for Public Participation
(IAP2) helps governments, organizations, and communities improve their decisions by involving the
people whose lives are affected by those decisions.
www.iap2.org
National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation
The National Coalition for Dialogue and Deliberation
(NCDD) convenes people and groups who practice,
promote, and study inclusive, high-quality conversations. NCDD seeks to nurture justice, innovation,
and democracy throughout society through the
widespread use of transformational communication
methods such as dialogue and deliberation.
www.ncdd.org
50
IBM Center for The Business of Government
OECD Handbook on Information, Consultation
and Public Participation in Policy-making
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD) handbook is a practitioner’s
guide designed for use by government officials in
OECD Member and non-Member countries. It offers
a practical road map for building robust frameworks
for informing, consulting, and engaging citizens
during policy making.
www1.oecd.org/publications/e-book/4201131E.PDF
United States Environmental Protection Agency
Public Involvement Policy
The EPA’s site for public involvement is designed
to help users understand how different types of
public involvement relate to EPA programs, how
public input can be used in EPA decision making, and
how various tools can be used to support effective
public involvement.
www.epa.gov/publicinvolvement/
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Resource Persons (Interviews)
Catherine Alexander
Communications Director
Office of Nanotechnology
David Emmerson
Senior Program Coordinator
U.S. Department of the Interior
Catherine Auger
Senior Learning Advisor
Health Canada
Beverly Godwin
Director
FirstGov.gov
Roger Bernier
Senior Advisor for Scientific Strategy and Innovation
National Immunization Program
U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
John Gotze
Senior Consultant
Ministry of Science, Technology, and Innovation
(Denmark)
Patricia Bonner
Public Involvement Staff
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Mary Davis Hamlin
Senior Associate
Keystone Center
Cecelia Broderick
Principal Policy Officer
Office of Citizens and Civics (Canada)
Tine Hansen-Turton
Executive Director
National Nursing Centers Consortium (Canada)
John Burklow
Associate Director
National Institutes of Health (U.S.)
Marcia Keener
Program Analyst
National Park Service (U.S.)
Debbie Cook
Senior Advisor, Consultation
Privy Council Office
Office of the Prime Minister (Canada)
David Kuehn
Community Planner
Federal Highway Administration (U.S.)
Robin Delany-Shabazz
Director, Concentration of Federal Efforts Program
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
U.S. Department of Justice
Jerry Delli Priscoli
Senior Advisor
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Sarah Landry
Associate Director, Communications and Legislation
National Vaccine Advisory Committee
Anita Linde
Special Assistant
National Institutes of Health (U.S.)
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Leanne Nurse
Program Analyst
Center for Innovation
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
William Pehlivanian
Deputy Program Manager
United States Army
Susan Saul
Outreach Specialist
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
Rona Siskind
Health Sciences Specialist
Division of AIDS
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases
National Institutes of Health
Jill Solberg
Public Affairs Specialist
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Lorna Tessier
Public Relations Manager
Canadian Blood Services
Stephen Thom
Deputy Director
Community Relations Service
U.S. Department of Justice
Mary Beth Thompson
Public Affairs Specialist
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
Karen Trebon
Program Manager
Citizen Service Levels Interagency Committee (CSLIC)
General Services Administration
Suzanne Wells
Community Involvement and Communications
SuperFund
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
Richard Whitley
Executive Liaison for Citizen Stewardship
Bureau of Land Management
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IBM Center for The Business of Government
Stuart Willoughby
Director of E-Gov Program Office
General Services Administration
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
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from Listening to the City, http://dialogues.listeningtothecity.org/
Clift, Steven. 2004. E-Government and Democracy:
Representation and Citizen Engagement in the
Information Age. Retrieved July 2005 from Publicus.net.
Cornwall, Andrea, and John Gaventa. 2001. From
Users and Choosers to Makers and Shapers:
Repositioning Participation in Social Policy. Brighton,
UK: Institute for Development Studies.
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TechRepublic Online library.
EchoDitto. 2004. The Empowerment Age: Why the
Internet Matters. Washington, D.C.: EchoDitto.
EKOS. 2002. Private Voices, Public Choices. Ottawa,
Ontario: EKOS.
Forester, John. 1999. The Deliberative Practitioner.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Frewer, Dr. Lynn. 2001. “Public Participation
Methods: Evolving and Operationalizing an
Evaluation Framework.” Unpublished paper.
Gunn, Rosemary, and Bob Carlitz. 2003. Online
Dialogue in a Political Context: The California
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
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PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
A B O U T
T H E
A U T H O R S
Dr. Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer, Founder and President of AmericaSpeaks, has
made her mark as an innovator in deliberative democracy, public administration, and organizational development. Concerns about the deep partisan
divide in Washington, D.C., and the growing disconnection between citizens and government across the country led Dr. Lukensmeyer to launch
AmericaSpeaks in 1995. Her goal was to develop new democratic practices that would strengthen the citizen’s voice in public decision making.
Under Lukensmeyer’s leadership, AmericaSpeaks has earned a national
reputation as a leader in the field of deliberative democracy and democratic renewal. She and AmericaSpeaks have won a number of awards,
including two from the International Association for Public Participation
(2001 and 2003), an award for best practices from the Department of
Housing and Urban Development, a Distinguished Service Award from the Federal Managers Association
for Outstanding Leadership (1994), and a Best Practice Award from the National Training Laboratories
Institute in 1993.
Dr. Lukensmeyer earned a Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Case Western Reserve University and
completed postgraduate training at the internationally known Gestalt Institute of Cleveland. She is affiliated
with the American Management Association, National Training Laboratories, Organization Development
Network, and the Organization and Management Division of the American Psychological Association, and
serves on the board of the Fielding Institute.
www.businessofgovernment.org
55
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
Lars Hasselblad Torres is staff researcher for AmericaSpeaks, responsible
for tracking the field of deliberative democracy, internal evaluation, and
online innovation. As part of his efforts to map the field of deliberative
democracy at home and abroad, Torres is leading AmericaSpeaks’
development of an interactive online inventory of deliberation experiences and an international research effort to map deliberative and
inclusionary processes being carried out with partners in Canada, the
United Kingdom, and Australia.
Torres also develops research partnerships with universities across the
country to design and implement quantitative and qualitative measures of
the impact of deliberation, both on policy outcomes and on participants.
A significant part of this work is directed at better understanding whether
participation in deliberative forums results in lasting changes in participants’ political attitudes and behavior.
A final area of focus in Torres’ research is ongoing exploration into online innovations in citizen engagement.
These innovations include online deliberative forums, social networks and online communities, the revolution
in citizen journalism, and the integration of mobile and wireless devices into administrative process.
Torres studied at the University of Southern California and the School for International Training, where he
received a bachelor’s degree in international studies in 1995.
56
IBM Center for The Business of Government
PUBLIC DELIBERATION: A MANAGER’S GUIDE TO CITIZEN ENGAGEMENT
K E Y
C O N T A C T
I N F O R M A T I O N
To contact the authors:
Dr. Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer
President
AmericaSpeaks
1050 17th Street, NW, Suite 701
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 775-3939
fax: (202) 775-0404
e-mail: [email protected]
Lars Hasselblad Torres
Researcher
AmericaSpeaks
1050 17th Street, NW, Suite 701
Washington, DC 20036
(202) 549-8346
e-mail: [email protected]
www.businessofgovernment.org
57
C ENT ER RE PORTS AVA IL A B L E
COLLABORATION:
PARTNERSHIPS AND
NETWORKS
Leveraging Networks to Meet
National Goals: FEMA and the Safe
Construction Networks (March 2002)
William L. Waugh, Jr.
21st-Century Government and the
Challenge of Homeland Defense
(June 2002)
Elaine C. Kamarck
Assessing Partnerships: New Forms
of Collaboration (March 2003)
Robert Klitgaard and Gregory F.
Treverton
Leveraging Networks: A Guide for
Public Managers Working across
Organizations (March 2003)
Robert Agranoff
Extraordinary Results on National
Goals: Networks and Partnerships in
the Bureau of Primary Health Care’s
100%/0 Campaign (March 2003)
John Scanlon
Public-Private Strategic Partnerships:
The U.S. Postal Service-Federal
Express Alliance (May 2003)
Oded Shenkar
The Challenge of Coordinating
“Big Science” (July 2003)
W. Henry Lambright
Communities of Practice: A New
Tool for Government Managers
(November 2003)
William M. Snyder and Xavier de
Souza Briggs
Collaboration and Performance
Management in Network Settings:
Lessons from Three Watershed
Governance Efforts (April 2004)
Mark T. Imperial
The Quest to Become “One”:
An Approach to Internal
Collaboration (February 2005)
Russ Linden
Cooperation Between Social Security
and Tax Agencies in Europe (April 2005)
Bernhard Zaglmayer, Paul Schoukens,
and Danny Pieters
Leveraging Collaborative Networks
in Infrequent Emergency Situations
(June 2005)
Donald P. Moynihan
58
Public Deliberation: A Manager’s
Guide to Citizen Engagement
(February 2006)
Carolyn J. Lukensmeyer and
Lars Hasselblad Torres
E-GOVERNMENT
Supercharging the Employment
Agency: An Investigation of the Use
of Information and Communication
Technology to Improve the Service
of State Employment Agencies
(December 2000)
Anthony M. Townsend
Assessing a State’s Readiness for
Global Electronic Commerce:
Lessons from the Ohio Experience
(January 2001)
J. Pari Sabety and Steven I. Gordon
Preparing for Wireless and Mobile
Technologies in Government
(October 2002)
Ai-Mei Chang and P. K. Kannan
Public-Sector Information Security:
A Call to Action for Public-Sector
CIOs (October 2002, 2nd ed.)
Don Heiman
The Auction Model: How the Public
Sector Can Leverage the Power of
E-Commerce Through Dynamic
Pricing (November 2002, 2nd ed.)
David C. Wyld
The Promise of E-Learning in Africa:
The Potential for Public-Private
Partnerships (January 2003)
Norman LaRocque and Michael Latham
Privacy Strategies for Electronic
Government (January 2001)
Janine S. Hiller and France Bélanger
Digitally Integrating the
Government Supply Chain:
E-Procurement, E-Finance, and
E-Logistics (February 2003)
Jacques S. Gansler, William
Lucyshyn, and Kimberly M. Ross
Commerce Comes to Government
on the Desktop: E-Commerce
Applications in the Public Sector
(February 2001)
Genie N. L. Stowers
Using Technology to Increase
Citizen Participation
in Government: The Use of Models
and Simulation (April 2003)
John O’Looney
The Use of the Internet in Government
Service Delivery (February 2001)
Steven Cohen and William Eimicke
Seaport: Charting a New Course for
Professional Services Acquisition for
America’s Navy (June 2003)
David C. Wyld
State Web Portals: Delivering and
Financing E-Service (January 2002)
Diana Burley Gant, Jon P. Gant, and
Craig L. Johnson
E-Reporting: Strengthening Democratic
Accountability (February 2004)
Mordecai Lee
Internet Voting: Bringing Elections
to the Desktop (February 2002)
Robert S. Done
Understanding Electronic
Signatures: The Key to
E-Government (March 2004)
Stephen H. Holden
Leveraging Technology in the
Service of Diplomacy: Innovation
in the Department of State
(March 2002)
Barry Fulton
Measuring the Performance of
E-Government (March 2004)
Genie N. L. Stowers
Federal Intranet Work Sites: An
Interim Assessment (June 2002)
Julianne G. Mahler and Priscilla M.
Regan
The State of Federal Websites: The
Pursuit of Excellence (August 2002)
Genie N. L. Stowers
State Government E-Procurement in
the Information Age: Issues, Practices,
and Trends (September 2002)
M. Jae Moon
Restoring Trust in Government:
The Potential of Digital Citizen
Participation (August 2004)
Marc Holzer, James Melitski, SeungYong Rho, and Richard Schwester
From E-Government to
M-Government? Emerging Practices
in the Use of Mobile Technology by
State Governments (November 2004)
M. Jae Moon
To download or order a copy of a report, visit the IBM Center for The Business of Government website at: www.businessofgovernment.org
Government Garage Sales: Online
Auctions as Tools for Asset
Management (November 2004)
David C. Wyld
Federal Credit Programs: Managing
Risk in the Information Age
(April 2005)
Thomas H. Stanton
Innovation in E-Procurement: The
Italian Experience (November 2004)
Mita Marra
Grants Management in the 21st
Century: Three Innovative Policy
Responses (October 2005)
Timothy J. Conlan
Computerisation and E-Government
in Social Security: A Comparative
International Study (July 2005)
Michael Adler and Paul Henman
The Next Big Election Challenge:
Developing Electronic Data
Transaction Standards for Election
Administration (July 2005)
R. Michael Alvarez and Thad E. Hall
RFID: The Right Frequency for
Government (October 2005)
David C. Wyld
FINANCIAL
MANAGEMENT
Credit Scoring and Loan Scoring:
Tools for Improved Management of
Federal Credit Programs (July 1999)
Thomas H. Stanton
Using Activity-Based Costing to
Manage More Effectively
(January 2000)
Michael H. Granof, David E. Platt,
and Igor Vaysman
Audited Financial Statements:
Getting and Sustaining “Clean”
Opinions (July 2001)
Douglas A. Brook
Performance Budgeting: How NASA
and SBA Link Costs and Performance
(February 2006)
Lloyd A. Blanchard
HUMAN CAPITAL
MANAGEMENT
Profiles in Excellence: Conversations
with the Best of America’s Career
Executive Service (November 1999)
Mark W. Huddleston
Reflections on Mobility: Case
Studies of Six Federal Executives
(May 2000)
Michael D. Serlin
Managing Telecommuting in the
Federal Government: An Interim
Report (June 2000)
Gina Vega and Louis Brennan
Using Virtual Teams to Manage
Complex Projects: A Case Study of
the Radioactive Waste Management
Project (August 2000)
Samuel M. DeMarie
A Learning-Based Approach to
Leading Change (December 2000)
Barry Sugarman
An Introduction to Financial Risk
Management in Government
(August 2001)
Richard J. Buttimer, Jr.
Labor-Management Partnerships:
A New Approach to Collaborative
Management (July 2001)
Barry Rubin and Richard Rubin
Understanding Federal Asset
Management: An Agenda for Reform
(July 2003)
Thomas H. Stanton
Winning the Best and Brightest:
Increasing the Attraction of Public
Service (July 2001)
Carol Chetkovich
Efficiency Counts: Developing the
Capacity to Manage Costs at Air
Force Materiel Command
(August 2003)
Michael Barzelay and Fred
Thompson
A Weapon in the War for Talent:
Using Special Authorities to Recruit
Crucial Personnel (December 2001)
Hal G. Rainey
A Changing Workforce: Understanding
Diversity Programs in the Federal
Government (December 2001)
Katherine C. Naff and J. Edward
Kellough
Life after Civil Service Reform:
The Texas, Georgia, and Florida
Experiences (October 2002)
Jonathan Walters
The Defense Leadership and
Management Program: Taking
Career Development Seriously
(December 2002)
Joseph A. Ferrara and Mark C. Rom
The Influence of Organizational
Commitment on Officer Retention:
A 12-Year Study of U.S. Army
Officers (December 2002)
Stephanie C. Payne, Ann H.
Huffman, and Trueman R. Tremble, Jr.
Human Capital Reform: 21st
Century Requirements for the United
States Agency for International
Development (March 2003)
Anthony C. E. Quainton and
Amanda M. Fulmer
Modernizing Human Resource
Management in the Federal
Government: The IRS Model
(April 2003)
James R. Thompson and Hal G.
Rainey
Mediation at Work: Transforming
Workplace Conflict at the United
States Postal Service (October 2003)
Lisa B. Bingham
Growing Leaders for Public Service
(August 2004, 2nd ed.)
Ray Blunt
Pay for Performance: A Guide for
Federal Managers (November 2004)
Howard Risher
The Blended Workforce: Maximizing
Agility Through Nonstandard Work
Arrangements (April 2005)
James R. Thompson and Sharon H.
Mastracci
The Transformation of the Government
Accountability Office: Using Human
Capital to Drive Change (July 2005)
Jonathan Walters and Charles
Thompson
To download or order a copy of a report, visit the IBM Center for The Business of Government website at: www.businessofgovernment.org
59
C ENT ER RE PORTS AVA IL A B L E
INNOVATION
Managing Workfare: The Case of the
Work Experience Program in the New
York City Parks Department (June 1999)
Steven Cohen
New Tools for Improving Government
Regulation: An Assessment of
Emissions Trading and Other MarketBased Regulatory Tools (October 1999)
Gary C. Bryner
Religious Organizations, Anti-Poverty
Relief, and Charitable Choice:
A Feasibility Study of Faith-Based
Welfare Reform in Mississippi
(November 1999)
John P. Bartkowski and Helen A. Regis
Business Improvement Districts and
Innovative Service Delivery
(November 1999)
Jerry Mitchell
An Assessment of Brownfield
Redevelopment Policies: The
Michigan Experience
(November 1999)
Richard C. Hula
San Diego County’s Innovation
Program: Using Competition and a
Whole Lot More to Improve Public
Services (January 2000)
William B. Eimicke
Innovation in the Administration
of Public Airports (March 2000)
Scott E. Tarry
Entrepreneurial Government:
Bureaucrats as Businesspeople
(May 2000)
Anne Laurent
Rethinking U.S. Environmental
Protection Policy: Management
Challenges for a New Administration
(November 2000)
Dennis A. Rondinelli
The Challenge of Innovating
in Government (February 2001)
Sandford Borins
Understanding Innovation:
What Inspires It? What Makes
It Successful? (December 2001)
Jonathan Walters
60
Government Management of
Information Mega-Technology:
Lessons from the Internal Revenue
Service’s Tax Systems Modernization
(March 2002)
Barry Bozeman
Advancing High End Computing:
Linking to National Goals
(September 2003)
Juan D. Rogers and Barry Bozeman
MANAGING FOR
PERFORMANCE AND
RESULTS
Corporate Strategic Planning
in Government: Lessons from
the United States Air Force
(November 2000)
Colin Campbell
Using Evaluation to Support
Performance Management:
A Guide for Federal Executives
(January 2001)
Kathryn Newcomer and Mary Ann
Scheirer
Managing for Outcomes: Milestone
Contracting in Oklahoma
(January 2001)
Peter Frumkin
The Challenge of Developing
Cross-Agency Measures:
A Case Study of the Office of
National Drug Control Policy
(August 2001)
Patrick J. Murphy and John Carnevale
The Potential of the Government
Performance and Results Act as a
Tool to Manage Third-Party
Government (August 2001)
David G. Frederickson
Using Performance Data for
Accountability: The New York City
Police Department’s CompStat
Model of Police Management
(August 2001)
Paul E. O’Connell
Moving Toward More Capable
Government: A Guide to
Organizational Design (June 2002)
Thomas H. Stanton
The Baltimore CitiStat Program:
Performance and Accountability
(May 2003)
Lenneal J. Henderson
Strategies for Using State
Information: Measuring and
Improving Program Performance
(December 2003)
Shelley H. Metzenbaum
Linking Performance and Budgeting:
Opportunities in the Federal Budget
Process (January 2004, 2nd ed.)
Philip G. Joyce
How Federal Programs Use Outcome
Information: Opportunities for
Federal Managers
(February 2004, 2nd ed.)
Harry P. Hatry, Elaine Morley, Shelli
B. Rossman, and Joseph S. Wholey
Performance Leadership: 11 Better
Practices That Can Ratchet Up
Performance (May 2004)
Robert D. Behn
Performance Management for
Career Executives: A “Start Where
You Are, Use What You Have” Guide
(October 2004, 2nd ed.)
Chris Wye
Staying the Course: The Use of
Performance Measurement in State
Governments (November 2004)
Julia Melkers and Katherine
Willoughby
Moving from Outputs to Outcomes:
Practical Advice from Governments
Around the World (January 2006)
Burt Perrin
MARKET-BASED
GOVERNMENT
Determining a Level Playing Field
for Public-Private Competition
(November 1999)
Lawrence L. Martin
Implementing State Contracts for
Social Services: An Assessment of
the Kansas Experience (May 2000)
Jocelyn M. Johnston and Barbara S.
Romzek
To download or order a copy of a report, visit the IBM Center for The Business of Government website at: www.businessofgovernment.org
A Vision of the Government as
a World-Class Buyer: Major
Procurement Issues for the Coming
Decade (January 2002)
Jacques S. Gansler
Contracting for the 21st Century:
A Partnership Model (January 2002)
Wendell C. Lawther
Franchise Funds in the Federal
Government: Ending the Monopoly
in Service Provision (February 2002)
John J. Callahan
Making Performance-Based
Contracting Perform: What the
Federal Government Can Learn from
State and Local Governments
(November 2002, 2nd ed.)
Lawrence L. Martin
Moving to Public-Private
Partnerships: Learning from
Experience around the World
(February 2003)
Trefor P. Williams
IT Outsourcing: A Primer for Public
Managers (February 2003)
Yu-Che Chen and James Perry
The Procurement Partnership Model:
Moving to a Team-Based Approach
(February 2003)
Kathryn G. Denhardt
Moving Toward Market-Based
Government: The Changing Role
of Government as the Provider
(March 2004, 2nd ed.)
Jacques S. Gansler
Transborder Service Systems:
Pathways for Innovation or Threats
to Accountability? (March 2004)
Alasdair Roberts
Competitive Sourcing: What
Happens to Federal Employees?
(October 2004)
Jacques S. Gansler and William
Lucyshyn
Implementing Alternative Sourcing
Strategies: Four Case Studies
(October 2004)
Edited by Jacques S. Gansler and
William Lucyshyn
Designing Competitive Bidding
for Medicare (November 2004)
John Cawley and Andrew B.
Whitford
International Experience Using
Outsourcing, Public-Private
Partnerships, and Vouchers
(October 2005)
Jón R. Blöndal
TRANSFORMATION OF
ORGANIZATIONS
The Importance of Leadership:
The Role of School Principals
(September 1999)
Paul Teske and Mark Schneider
Leadership for Change: Case Studies
in American Local Government
(September 1999)
Robert B. Denhardt and Janet
Vinzant Denhardt
Managing Decentralized
Departments: The Case of the
U.S. Department of Health and
Human Services (October 1999)
Beryl A. Radin
Transforming Government: The
Renewal and Revitalization of the
Federal Emergency Management
Agency (April 2000)
R. Steven Daniels and Carolyn L.
Clark-Daniels
Transforming Government: Creating
the New Defense Procurement
System (April 2000)
Kimberly A. Harokopus
Trans-Atlantic Experiences in Health
Reform: The United Kingdom’s
National Health Service and the
United States Veterans Health
Administration (May 2000)
Marilyn A. DeLuca
Transforming Government: The
Revitalization of the Veterans Health
Administration (June 2000)
Gary J. Young
The Challenge of Managing Across
Boundaries: The Case of the Office
of the Secretary in the U.S.
Department of Health and Human
Services (November 2000)
Beryl A. Radin
Creating a Culture of Innovation:
10 Lessons from America’s Best Run
City (January 2001)
Janet Vinzant Denhardt and Robert B.
Denhardt
Transforming Government: Dan
Goldin and the Remaking of NASA
(March 2001)
W. Henry Lambright
Managing Across Boundaries: A
Case Study of Dr. Helene Gayle and
the AIDS Epidemic (January 2002)
Norma M. Riccucci
Managing “Big Science”: A Case
Study of the Human Genome Project
(March 2002)
W. Henry Lambright
The Power of Frontline Workers in
Transforming Government: The
Upstate New York Veterans
Healthcare Network (April 2003)
Timothy J. Hoff
Making Public Sector Mergers Work:
Lessons Learned (August 2003)
Peter Frumkin
Efficiency Counts: Developing the
Capacity to Manage Costs at Air
Force Materiel Command
(August 2003)
Michael Barzelay and Fred
Thompson
Managing the New Multipurpose,
Multidiscipline University Research
Centers: Institutional Innovation
in the Academic Community
(November 2003)
Barry Bozeman and P. Craig
Boardman
The Transformation of the Government
Accountability Office: Using Human
Capital to Drive Change (July 2005)
Jonathan Walters and Charles
Thompson
Transforming the Intelligence
Community: Improving the
Collection and Management of
Information (October 2005)
Elaine C. Kamarck
Executive Response to Changing
Fortune: Sean O’Keefe as NASA
Administrator (October 2005)
W. Henry Lambright
Ramping Up Large, Non-Routine
Projects: Lessons for Federal
Managers from the Successful
2000 Census (November 2005)
Nancy A. Potok and William G.
Barron, Jr.
To download or order a copy of a report, visit the IBM Center for The Business of Government website at: www.businessofgovernment.org
61
C ENT ER RE PORTS AVA IL A B L E
The Next Government of the United
States: Challenges for Performance
in the 21st Century (December 2005)
Donald F. Kettl
CENTER FOR HEALTHCARE
MANAGEMENT REPORTS
2004 PRESIDENTIAL
TRANSITION SERIES
The Power of Frontline Workers
in Transforming Healthcare
Organizations: The Upstate New
York Veterans Healthcare Network
(December 2003)
Timothy J. Hoff
Government Reorganization:
Strategies and Tools to Get It Done
(August 2004)
Hannah Sistare
IT Outsourcing: A Primer for
Healthcare Managers
(December 2003)
Yu-Che Chen and James Perry
Performance Management for
Political Executives: A “Start Where
You Are, Use What You Have” Guide
(October 2004)
Chris Wye
Becoming an Effective Political
Executive: 7 Lessons from
Experienced Appointees
(January 2005, 2nd ed.)
Judith E. Michaels
Getting to Know You: Rules of
Engagement for Political Appointees
and Career Executives
(January 2005)
Joseph A. Ferrara and Lynn C. Ross
SPECIAL REPORTS
Enhancing Security Throughout the
Supply Chain (April 2004)
David J. Closs and Edmund F.
McGarrell
Assessing the Impact of IT-Driven
Education in K–12 Schools
(May 2005)
Ganesh D. Bhatt
Investing in Supply Chain Security:
Collateral Benefits
(December 2005, 2nd ed.)
James B. Rice, Jr., and Philip W.
Spayd
62
To download or order a copy of a report, visit the IBM Center for The Business of Government website at: www.businessofgovernment.org
BO O KS*
Collaboration: Using Networks and
Partnerships
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2004)
John M. Kamensky and Thomas J.
Burlin, editors
Memos to the President:
Management Advice from the
Nation’s Top Public Administrators
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2001)
Mark A. Abramson, editor
E-Government 2001
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2001)
Mark A. Abramson and Grady E.
Means, editors
New Ways of Doing Business
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2003)
Mark A. Abramson and Ann M.
Kieffaber, editors
E-Government 2003
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2002)
Mark A. Abramson and Therese L.
Morin, editors
The Procurement Revolution
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2003)
Mark A. Abramson and Roland S.
Harris III, editors
Human Capital 2002
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2002)
Mark A. Abramson and Nicole
Willenz Gardner, editors
Transforming Government Supply
Chain Management
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2003)
Jacques S. Gansler and Robert E.
Luby, Jr., editors
Human Capital 2004
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2004)
Jonathan D. Breul and Nicole
Willenz Gardner, editors
Innovation
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2002)
Mark A. Abramson and Ian Littman,
editors
Transforming Organizations
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2001)
Mark A. Abramson and Paul R.
Lawrence, editors
Leaders
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2002)
Mark A. Abramson and Kevin M.
Bacon, editors
Learning the Ropes: Insights for
Political Appointees
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2005)
Mark A. Abramson and Paul R.
Lawrence, editors
Managing for Results 2002
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2001)
Mark A. Abramson and John M.
Kamensky, editors
Managing for Results 2005
(Rowman & Littlefield Publishers,
Inc., 2004)
John M. Kamensky and Albert
Morales, editors
* Available at bookstores, online booksellers, and from the publisher (www.rowmanlittlefield.com or 800-462-6420).
63
About the IBM Center for The Business of Government
Through research stipends and events, the IBM Center for
The Business of Government stimulates research and facilitates
discussion on new approaches to improving the effectiveness of
government at the federal, state, local, and international levels.
The Center is one of the ways that IBM seeks to advance
knowledge on how to improve public sector effectiveness.
The IBM Center focuses on the future of the operation and
management of the public sector.
About IBM Business Consulting Services
With consultants and professional staff in more than 160 countries
globally, IBM Business Consulting Services is the world’s largest
consulting services organization. IBM Business Consulting Services
provides clients with business process and industry expertise, a
deep understanding of technology solutions that address specific
industry issues, and the ability to design, build and run those
solutions in a way that delivers bottom-line business value. For
more information visit www.ibm.com/bcs.
For additional information, contact:
Mark A. Abramson
Executive Director
IBM Center for The Business of Government
1301 K Street, NW
Fourth Floor, West Tower
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 515-4504, fax: (202) 515-4375
e-mail: [email protected]
website: www.businessofgovernment.org